


The Broken Wings of Reverie (Leave Me Always Having Faith)

by LaGaucherie



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Asexual Relationship, Asexuality, Avengers Banter, F/M, Fluff, LGBTQ, Multiple bit-part OCs, Past Relationships, Platonic Romance, Snark, ace - Freeform, cake makes everything better, friendship!, pre-Winter Soldier, segueing into Winter Soldier
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-16
Updated: 2014-12-26
Packaged: 2018-02-04 21:42:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 29,490
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1794175
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LaGaucherie/pseuds/LaGaucherie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>'Darcy shakes her head, still convincing herself that the last hour really and actually happened; still recovering from the blindside of seeing him sit down at that circle and share such an important a part of himself with them. With her.   </p><p>Just when she thought her life couldn’t get any weirder.'</p><p>Steve is figuring out some things about himself. He finds company in an unexpected quarter. </p><p>Or: the fact that Steve and Darcy are ace doesn't stop them from building a beautiful romance.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Just Staring at the Sky

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Steve attends a support group, Darcy reminisces about her time in London and a summer heatwave hits New York.

The realisation of what he is comes slowly.

In a society like his, and even the unfamiliar, permissive twenty-first century, sex is always the elephant in the room. Nobody mentions it off the bat; it’s something that happens behind closed doors, something that shapes the secret and the personal parts of people’s lives. Although it is tangible in the public sphere, its explicit domain still lies largely in the private.

So nobody ever really questioned the fact that he was happy to wait for ‘the right partner’, and first he was small and sickly and then he was at war with bigger things to think about. It’s only when he wakes up and finds that he has time on his hands for the first time in years that he really gives himself liberty to think about the way he feels about... about _all that stuff_.

Considering the way his body is now, he would have expected it to bring with it a certain degree of virility. But instead his strength and speed only seem to make sex seem more redundant. He is a soldier, now: such things are mere distractions. But even when he was surrounded by chorus girls every hour of the day and night, he never really felt tempted. In the long hours, as he destroys punching bags and reads up on the Pill and the Vietnam War, sometimes his mind drifts to this conundrum, and it takes a few Google searches to pull up the information that he wants.  He thinks briefly that SHIELD is probably noting everything that goes through his Internet history, and then decides that he doesn’t really care.

As he reads, things slowly start to click into place. Things about the way that he regarded Peggy: the way that he could never understand the self-indulgent way that other men complained that she was a ‘distraction’; the way that her kiss was pleasant and thrilling but felt like an end in itself, rather than a means to something more; and the way that dancing, above all else, had filled his mind in his last minutes.

Things, too, about Bucky, and the way that they meant so much to one another, though he had never felt the need to call his feelings by name. They had been intimate, they had been close in every way, but there hadn’t been anything sexual there. Platonic, Wikipedia called it. As he reflected on Bucky, Steve once again found himself mourning the friend that he had lost.

There’s a word for what he is, but he doesn’t feel comfortable with the label, not just yet. There is time enough for that. For now, it’s enough to have gained this self-knowledge, and to know that he is not alone.

***

Whenever Darcy mentions the word ‘ace’, a lot of people don’t know what the fuck she’s on about.

That’s okay, because she doesn’t mind explaining. And if sometimes they look at her incredulously when she’s done – her, with her red lips, big smile, voluptuous curves and unrepentant dress sense – well, she’s used to it.

She prides herself on being pretty hard to offend, and if she’s just irrevocably altered someone’s world views, well, that’s their issue and not hers.

She remembers when she came out of the fridge to Jane, who with her usual bluntness, asked her all the stock questions. Sometimes she thinks that Jane is a bitch, when she does stuff like that, but more normally it’s just the fact that her huge brain has prevented her from picking up on certain social ideas and if she doesn’t understand something, she’ll come at it from a sharply analytical perspective.

‘So you can’t have sex?’

‘I have all my equipment, Jane. I just prefer not to use it. Like you appear to be adverse to using your hands cleaning the toaster after one of your ‘Smore pop tarts explodes all over it.’   That snark probably hadn’t been helpful in the long term, but really, she hadn’t been able to resist. The trailer’s toaster really had been disgusting for a few days now.

‘You don’t want to have sex? Ever?’

Darcy shrugged. ‘Not really.’

‘But... but... are you sure that you just haven’t met the right guy? Or, or girl?’ Jane was obviously trying hard here, and it was kind of touching in a funny way.

‘I guess not. But only in the same kinda way that if you toss a coin enough times you might eventually find that there’s a result other than heads or tails.’

‘The coin could come down on its edge.’

‘Exactly. So not impossible. But still, not very likely either.’

Jane leant backwards and looked at her for a while, processing what she had said. ‘But you’re really attractive,’ she said, after a while.

Darcy shrugged again. ‘Not my fault.’ She thought about it. ‘Well, maybe kinda. I like to look nice and I flatter myself I’m pretty fun to be around.’

Jane snorted. ‘Well, when you’re not acting like some kind of nanny, or when you’re hung-over.’ And then suddenly everything was cool.

But Jane had taught Darcy a lot, too. When Jane had TNT level chemistry going with Thor, then he shot away into the sky and didn’t come home, Darcy witnessed the way that it tore her friend apart. She realised that while she might be part of a minority – a minority that had regularly its very existence questioned – sometimes being the way she was made things a lot less complicated.

Although, as she reflected, in London, curled into the foetal position and holding a bowl of ice cream, the whole thing with Ian proved that life always had a way of throwing something or other up in your face.

***

The first time that Steve considers going along to the group he sees advertised on an LGBTQ community website, his nerves almost get the better of him. He’s standing outside in the dusty city heat, pushing his sunglasses up his nose and deciding whether he could ever live it down if he turned tail and ran now.

‘Manhattan Ace Support Group’ sounded like such a cheesy, ridiculous thing. He can’t believe that he’s even considering getting involved with civilians over something like this. Steve’s confident that nobody would recognise him, but he would have to ad lib and redact so much of his life story that he’s not sure whether it would really end up helping him.

In the end, it’s a simple sense of curiosity that sends him along. Out of all the things that have changed about life whilst he was in the ice, the sexual revolution is probably one of the things that baffles him the most. He’s still trying to learn the ropes of this radically changed world, and sometimes he gets the feeling that everybody else around him is too, despite having grown up in it.

He wants to see whether other people have ever felt as confused and anchorless as he does, on the bad days.

When he gets to the community hall where the meeting is meant to be taking place, it’s empty, but there’s a big sign on the door, scrawled over in purple sharpie. ‘It’s so hot today, Aces are in the park over the road. We’re under the tree nearest the gate :)’

Steve sighs heavily and turns around, pulling his sunglasses back onto his face – ‘aviators’, Tony had called them, but to Steve they will always just be ‘shades’ – and heading back out. He has to admit that sitting outside on a day like this seems like a good idea. Heat is coming off the pavement in waves, and he would defeat Dr Doom for a tub of ice cream.

He sees a group of people sitting under a slender beech tree, as promised, and as he heads over, somebody waves to him. ‘A new member!’ exclaims someone else, and two people shuffle over to make space for him on the mess of picnic blankets laid out beneath the tree. ‘Someone chuck the guy a lemonade.’

There is also, he notices, a lot of cake spread out across the middle of the circle. ‘Take as much as you want,’ says the girl next to him, flicking her blonde hair out of her eyes as she follows his gaze . ‘Only I wouldn’t recommend the smooshed cupcakes, Pete made them and he sucks at baking.’

‘So I may have added a little too much milk...’ a guy – Pete, he guesses – says from the other side of the circle, raising his hands defensively.

Steve smiles nervously, and then – because he’s a super soldier and he might as well acknowledge that he’s always at least slightly hungry – he reaches forward and takes a big piece of brownie. Someone takes a can of lemonade out of a cool bag (amazing invention) and tosses it towards him, and he catches it out of the air with his other hand.

‘Nice reflexes,’ says the girl next to him.

He smiles. ‘Thanks.’

‘Well, if our newcomer has had enough stuff thrown at him, I think we’d better get started, we’ve already been gossiping for five minutes since the official start.’ The speaker is a woman, in her late twenties, he’d guess, and Asian by descent. Although he’s trying to school himself out of noticing and labelling these things so much, he glances around the circle, taking in his fellow... support groupers? Comrades-in-arms? He doesn’t know how to think of them.

The group is a mix of different ethnicities, and roughly two-thirds of them are female, although there are a couple of people whom he can’t say at first glance whether they’re masculine women or feminine men. He’s starting to get to grips with the idea of non-binary gender, though, and the other day he met a SHIELD agent who casually mentioned that she’d had a sex change operation the summer before, so he doesn’t let this hold him up for too long. Most of them are his age or younger, with a few middle-aged people and a pair of kids who look like they can’t be much older than eighteen. He’d guess that they’re new members, too, because they look as nervous as he feels. As the woman starts to speak, he stops looking around and focuses on her.

‘My name is Lynn and together with a few friends of mine we decided to found this group last year. One of the things about asexuality that people don’t always realise is that it can make people feel very insecure in their own identities, given that sex plays such an integral part in everyday life for most adults. We are by no means a group which encourages resentment or contempt for sexual people, so if that’s what you’re here for you can get up and leave right now. What we do want is to provide support and help all of you to feel comfortable in your identities.’ She smiled around the circle, and Steve found himself relaxing slightly. ‘We meet on the first Saturday of every month, and it’s great to see some familiar faces, and some new ones. In a minute, I’d like to go around the circle and get all of you to introduce yourselves. If we could have a name and a few facts about you – what you do, what you’re interested in, whatever you feel comfortable sharing.

‘I’ll start. As I already said, I’m Lynn. I work as a journalist and author. I also really like baking, although my partner tends to do most of the actual cooking.’

‘Her brownies are legendary,’ says a guy opposite Steve, gesturing at the plate from which Steve has already taken three slices. Steve has to agree.

‘My name is Yamato and I’m a biologist. I play the cello and until recently I lived in Cambridge, England,’ the man next to her offers, helping himself to another can of lemonade.

 And so it continues until they get to Steve, and he has what he planned to say all planned out before they start. ‘Hi. My name’s Joseph Barnes and I work with the military. I really enjoy drawing, but I’m not as good at it as I’d like to be.’ The fake identity – a mix of Bucky’s name and his father’s – are the only real lie he’s told. He feels guilty about it – lying to these people when the whole object of the exercise is trust – but he doesn’t want to take any chances.

Everyone nods and smiles, suspecting nothing, and the girl next to him –Alex – says that she’s an illustrator, offering to give him some pointers if he ever wants them. He ducks his head and murmurs that she’s too nice, and it’s only when he looks up again that he notices that a girl on the other side of the circle is watching him intently.

He tenses immediately. She’s sitting where the shade of the beech tree is deepest, wearing short shorts and a baggy white T-shirt with four men crossing the road on the front of it, (he feels like it’s an iconic image even if he can’t place it right now). She’s wearing a huge floppy sunhat and glasses a bit like his, so he can hardly make out her face.

Steve’s face hardens and he clenches his teeth. A SHIELD agent, sent to tail him? Or something more sinister? He sits in silence until she realises that he’s seen her, and she quickly takes off her big hat, and shuffles forward slightly. There’s silence around the circle, and he realises that it’s her turns to talk.

Comprehension strikes at the exact moment that Lynn calls on her.

‘Darcy? The heat stroke not getting the better of your cream and roses complexion?’ she teases.

‘Yeah... um. No.’ She looks up, and then takes off her sunglasses as well. Her blue eyes squint across the circle in the sudden light, and she looks as surprised as he feels.

‘Like Lynn said. My name’s Darcy Lewis. I, um. I’m a regular. Most of you probably recognise me. I’m – uh, I’m a lab assistant to an astrophysicist, but I’m moving into PR once I’ve trained someone, to, um, take my place. And my hobbies include krav maga and blogging angrily about politics. Um. And I like cooking. That’s about it.’

***

For the first time since she and Jane watched the battle of New York from opposite sides of the Atlantic, Darcy feels entirely and completely lost for words.

Technically, Captain America’s civilian identity is above her clearance level, but she’s worked in SHIELD-Stark affiliated R&D with Jane for nine months now, and there’s very little about Tony which is either concerned with clearance levels or discretion. So when a cut blonde guy had walked into the lab in Captain America’s uniform, and Tony had looked up with, ‘you need to _warn_ me before you visit, Rogers, or I can’t get in the apple pie!’, very little had been left to her intuition.

Since that first meeting, she’s shared a few conversations with him. They mostly seem to consist of her trying to make him laugh with jokes that he doesn’t get and then writing down the names of books and films that he like, _needs_ to check out, _cuanto antes,_ dude _._ And him ducking his head and tucking her list away with a ‘I’ll get to it, Ma’am – sorry, _Ms Lewis_ – and going to sigh at Tony before she can screw up the energy to get him to call her Darcy. She doesn’t think he likes her very much; her loudness and her interest in pop culture probably offend his delicate forties sensibilities, and she wouldn’t be surprised if he thought her penchant for mocking innuendo and her low tolerance for sexism are unbecoming traits for a ‘dame’. Tony and Bruce assure her that he’s a great guy, but she’s always felt slightly defensive around him: felt as if she isn’t quite living up to his version of the American dream.

 She feels like such a hypocrite for being surprised to see him here, because why the fuck should Captain America _not_ be asexual? She has been making some major assumptions about him being a repressed forties bloke when his eyes have never once strayed below her face during their conversations, and now she feels, like, _really bad._ She wonders whether anyone put him up to this.

Somehow, she doubts it. If SHIELD didn’t tell him that _Star Wars_ is mandatory watching, she somehow feels they’re unlikely to guide him gently through the intricacies of sexual identity.

She’s so distracted by his presence here that she barely notices the fact that introductions are over and Lynn is moving the conversation forward. It takes a concerted effort to make herself tune back into the conversation.

‘So for today’s meeting, I decided that an appropriate topic for discussion might be the links between sexuality and romance. Some aces are also aromantic, but others aren’t, myself for one. Sometimes it can be difficult for people to understand that sustaining a romantic relationship without sex is feasible, despite many examples of functional and happy relationships of this sort. So I wanted to start by asking whether anybody has experiences in this matter that they would feel comfortable with sharing with the group?’

Darcy closed her eyes briefly. Of course, out of all the topics up for discussion, it had to be this one.

She grabbed another slice of Victoria Sponge to fortify herself.

***

Darcy. Darcy _Lewis._ Darcy, ‘Jane’s Real-Life-Interaction-Guru, nice to meet ya’ Lewis. Darcy ‘ _Thor and Odin,_ her rack, before Pepper I would’ve _hit_ that’ Lewis.  Scarlet-lipped, vivacious, foul-mouthed Darcy Lewis.

Darcy personifies everything that puts him off the idea of getting into a relationship with a great woman only to let her down.

Or so he had thought.

After she’s floundered through her introduction – for the first time since he met her, unsure of her words – she ends up sitting in silence, fiddling with her lemonade can until the ring-pull comes off, looking at him every now and again out of the corner of her eye. He has his sunglasses on, still, so he feels fairly confident that she can’t tell that he’s staring at her from across the circle. Now that he’s pulled his jaw up from the floor, at least.

Well, this will at least teach him to make assumptions about people: because out of everybody he knows – admittedly, not a huge group – Darcy is one of those who would rank lowest on his list of ‘people who are regulars at an Ace Support meeting’.  It’s also thrown all his perceptions of Darcy and the way that he relates to her into free-fall, and suddenly, now that he knows that he wouldn’t be letting her down if –

If what? If he let himself be more than polite? If he came back and told her what he thought of all the books and movies that she recommends to him, and thanked her for suggesting them? If he took her out for a meal or a movie or to Coney Island, and didn’t offer anything further than a good-night kiss...?

But he’s getting way too far ahead of himself, and lost track of what Lynn’s saying into the bargain. Something about romantic relationships. Right.

He can do this.

***

Ian had been Darcy’s first real romantic disaster. Whilst Thor and Jane had been away dimension-hopping, she and Ian had had a lot of time to talk. She’d realised pretty early on that he was attracted to her, and she wasn’t a big fan of leading people on. So she told it to him straight, and he asserted that he didn’t care.

She’d been shocked, but more than a little touched, and as time progressed and they got closer, and Jane’s work in London showed no sign of drying up, she tentatively let herself think of them as a couple. Their ‘dates’ were really not much more than going to the pub or the movies on slow science days, but she didn’t mind and he didn’t seem to either. She enjoyed his company, and they understood each other: two relatively normal people shoved into a situation that often felt like it was operating out of anyone’s control.

Darcy didn’t realise that she was falling in love with him until he started pulling away.

He seemed distant, seemed to get impatient with her more easily, and sometimes when they kissed he would get unpleasantly handsy. She had already said that she was fine with him getting his kicks with someone else, but he asked her about it constantly, and on more and more evenings, he dodged her questions about plans. She tried not to feel upset about it, she felt guilty, and more than once she considered trying to give him what he wanted, though deep down she knew that it wouldn’t solve anything.

When he ended it, Darcy saw it coming like it was a train and she was tied to the tracks. She closed her eyes and nodded through his speech, and then got up and left the café before he could see her tears fall. Shortly after that, Jane got her offer from Stark, and Ian stayed in London while they went.

As Darcy had watched England fall away beneath them, and the green, wonky-patchwork fields stretch away to the horizon, she had wished that she could turn the plane around and figure out what to say to him on her way down. As they banked through the cloud covering into the alien landscape of the sky, she had wondered whether she would ever be good enough for anybody.

Jane had looked at her biting her lip, and, in an uncharacteristic show of sensitivity, she had taken her hand.

‘ _Darcy?_ ’

‘Huh?’ Darcy looks up blankly. She flexes her fingers, and realises that she’s been pulling up handfuls of grass. She opens her hands and the green blades tumble gently onto the picnic basket.

Lynn sighs a little, and Darcy shakes her head hard, pulling herself out of her memories by her metaphorical hair. ‘I’m sorry. Penny for your thoughts? I seem to remember that last time we discussed this, you had some interesting observations to make on the topic.’

‘Sorry,’ Darcy collects herself, and looks around the circle, trying to make herself focus. She notices that Steve is still watching her, through his shades, probably wondering whether she’s about to run off and break the news to TMZ that Captain America is asexual. ‘Well, uh. Yeah, I’ve had a couple bad experiences. A while back, I got into a relationship with someone who was attracted to me physically, but decided that he could work past it. I don’t just mean he thought I was pretty – there’s a difference, like, I like hanging out with pretty people – but as in he wanted to bang me and I didn’t return the sentiment.’ Darcy sighs. She guesses that if Cap – Steve – can’t deal with her crassness then he’ll just have to deal with it. ‘I’m not saying that romantic relationships between sexual and asexual people _can’t_ work, but sometimes it’s difficult to know whether someone is telling you the whole truth, and if there’s suppressed feelings there, eventually the whole thing is gonna blow up in both your faces. What’s important is, I guess, is the honesty, and being truthful about what you can and can’t do.’

She looks down at the empty lemonade can in her hands. ‘This guy, he was very reserved, very British, but also very smart and funny, so his limitations kind of snuck up on both of us. Sorry, I’m rambling. I guess what I’m trying to say is... Honesty is the best policy. Make sure that you’retalking about problems and how you feel with your partner, and being realistic, because that way even if a relationship ends, you can end it gracefully.’

She makes herself smile and looks around the circle. ‘Alright, kids?’

‘Right!’ they chorus ironically, even Steve, and suddenly she feels a lot happier.

***

When the meeting comes to an end, Darcy gets up quickly, hands her soda can to Pete, who’s walking around with a garbage bag, and starts hurriedly to take her leave.

Steve takes a moment to thank everybody, and then takes off after her, not particularly caring what everybody else thinks.

Steve catches up with her just after they reach the park gate, and calls her name to get her attention, though she’s already turning at the sound of running feet. ‘Ms Lewis!’

She has her shades back on, and her face looks defensive. He can see why she was sitting in the shade during the meeting; they’ve only been out in the sun for a few minutes and the pale skin of her neck is already turning slightly pink.

‘Captain Rogers,’ she says, her tone forcedly light, ‘fancy meeting you here.’

‘Likewise,’ he says, and then, because he’s a complete wuss, he adds, ‘hey, I would appreciate it if – ’

‘I don’t tell anybody?’ she says, and now he hates himself because she looks really quite hurt. ‘Your secret is safe from my office gossip, _Joseph._ Besides, if I _was_ the kind of person who thought that being Ace was a) anything to be ashamed of and b) gossip-worthy, I would be kind of cutting off my nose to spite my face because what, I just happened to be _walking by_ an Ace support group?’ she shrugs.

He takes a step closer. ‘Sorry. Um. Thank you. And, uh, likewise.’

‘You mean you won’t tell people?’ she shrugs. ‘Well, thanks, I guess. Saves me a couple awkward and repetitive conversations.’

They stand in uncomfortable silence for a few moments. Darcy flicks a few pieces of grass from her hands. They’re very nice hands, Steve thinks. Creamy-skinned with neat blue-painted nails and writing calluses. 

‘I’m sorry if I was being rude back there,’ Steve says, after a minute. ‘It’s just... I never would have thought that you were. You know.’

Darcy raises her eyebrows. ‘Because I know how to make an innuendo and I wear eyeliner?’

Steve considers. ‘Pretty much.’

‘Aces come in all shapes and sizes, Rogers. But don’t beat yourself up. It’s not one of those things that really comes up in office chitchat, y’know?’ she grins. ‘Also, innuendos are hilarious.’

Steve can’t help but smile at that.

‘I guess I should apologise too,’ Darcy adds, after a moment. ‘I wasn’t exactly, uh, _not_ gawking at you either. I guess that’ll teach me to assume that every attractive guy from the forties I meet is sexually _repressed.’_

Steve laughs, and suddenly he feels like it’s okay for him to take a few steps forward and fall into step with her. ‘So where are you headed now?’

‘I’m meant to be meeting Jane, ostensibly for a coffee, but also just because I stick to the naïve belief that actually stepping outdoors at least once a week is good for people.’ Darcy groans. ‘Although with all the cake I ate back there, maybe I’ll just take her for a stroll around central park and hope that I don’t spontaneously combust in this heat.’ She looks at him, considering. ‘Don’t suppose that you wanna come with us? Help fend off the rabid squirrels?

Steve laughs again, and he’s realising, now that she doesn’t scare him anymore, that Darcy is actually really funny. For an instant, she reminds him of Bucky, and his smile fades as he remembers what’s in store for him for the rest of the afternoon. ‘I really wish I could, but I have a meeting with Hill. Debrief about the latest AIM attack.’ There had been a lot of SHIELD casualties, some of their best chemical field agents. And oops, that was probably classified.

Although he suspects that Darcy is adept at finagling information out of other people, too, because a flash of sympathy crosses her face as she listens to him. ‘Well, good luck with that. And it sucks you’ve gotta work on a Saturday.’

‘Evil never sleeps,’ he tells her, mock-seriously, and her face splits in a grin.

‘Was that an _actual joke_ , Cap?’

 He snorts. ‘Has today not taught you that I have layers?’

‘Hey, don’t get all skippy with me, man. Speaking of layers, though, can you really draw? Or did you make that up for the crowds?’

‘No, I can really draw,’ he affirms, ‘or at least, I really like drawing.’

‘Right, you have to show me sometime.’

Steve hesitates. ‘I’m not _that_ good...’

‘Well, I have close to zero artistic skills, so I’ll be wildly impressed by pretty much anything. Bring it with you to the lab next time you clash with Tony, or to the next meeting.’ She hesitates. ‘You are coming to the next meeting, right? I haven’t put you off for life?’

 _Sure, why not?_ He thinks, and aloud he ends up blurting, ‘quite the opposite, really.’

She looks surprised and pleased, and he tries not to let himself read too much into that. ‘So yeah, sketchbook,’ she says after a few moments, and smiles up at him. ‘Don’t forget.’

‘I’ll try not to, Ma’am,’ he says, and she snorts, then comes to a stop on the street.

‘This is where I go down into the bowels of the earth,’ she says, and somehow he hadn’t even noticed that they were coming up to a Subway entrance. ‘So I’ll see you around, yeah, Steve?’

‘Yeah,’ he says, ‘see you around, Darcy.’

She grins inordinately widely and turns away, and it’s only when she’s half-way down the steps that he realises that it’s the first time that he’s called her by her first name.

***

Darcy leans her head against the subway car window and looks at the silly grin on her face.

 _Wipe that off, woman,_ she thinks to herself, _just because you have one thing in common doesn’t mean anything._

He looked really nice when he laughed, though. White teeth and tanned skin and retro shades. She’d never seen him light-hearted like that before.

Perhaps she’s setting herself up for disappointment, but she kind of hopes that she’ll get to see him like that again, though. And as the Subway roars and the car sways around a bend, she already finds herself looking forward to their next meeting.

She shakes her head, still convincing herself that the last hour really and actually happened; still recovering from the blindside of seeing him sit down at that circle and share such an important a part of himself with them. With _her_.   

Just when she thought her life couldn’t get any weirder.

 

 

 

  


 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is something really quite close to my heart. I personally identify as gray or demi, but I have a couple of really good friends who are ace, and this story is a way of paying tribute to them, as well as exploring the richness and complexity of a group to which the world can be adversarial, and which is often treated as invisible. 
> 
> I also wanted to consider the idea of both Steve and Darcy's characters in the context of non-sexuality. A lot of fanfiction is focussed on shipping and sex, and while this absolutely no bad thing, it does mean that I have yet to come across an Avengers story in which asexuality or its related areas of the spectrum is explicitly portrayed. 
> 
> Also, Darcy, Steve and company are rad, and I'll take any excuse to write about then. ;) Please let me know what you think! Feedback is my lifeblood!
> 
> NB: The title of this work was derived from the song 'Grey Weather' by Gregory and the Hawk.


	2. I call on you to catch me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Darcy Lewis throws Captain America's mighty shield (or lifts it, at least).  
> Clint is a nosey spy, and Steve has a spot of trouble with cellular communication.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so very much to everyone who has commented, kudos'd, bookmarked or read this story. The level of feedback and positive support that it's received has just blown me away! I hope that you enjoy this chapter; it's a little lighter on the introspection and heavier on the gunfire. This could be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on your personal tastes. :P

As it happens, they end up meeting well before the following support group session.

Just over a week later, rightwing anti-alien extremists break into the SHIELD labs where Jane is attempting to stabilise the bifrost. They have bastardised StarkTech guns and grenades (Tony is going to have a _fun_ time figuring out how they got through his firewalls to obtain the necessary blueprints), and the agents milling around are shouting threat levels into their radios which increase by the second. It doesn't take long before the claxon wails reach a deafening pitch.

Darcy stuns twelve masked gunmen and throws acid over a thirteenth before losing her nerve and moving to cower beneath an overturned desk. She knows that she should have made a run for it about ten minutes ago, but Jane had been knocked unconscious in the first blast, and Darcy knows for a fact that some of the equipment that’s still in the lab is absolutely irreplaceable. She’s determined to at least put the lockdown on the lab benches, and hopefully move some of the smaller items out with her. She might have spent too many hours nagging Jane into leaving those damn projects alone before she passed out on her desk, but that doesn't mean that she wants to see them destroyed by a bunch of grenade-happy nutjobs.

So soon enough she’s sneaking out from under the table, stabbing buttons and steeling herself to make a dash over and salvage the spiky toaster-looking thing that Jane needs at least twice daily to be able to get the readings she needs. Taking a deep breath, she darts across the room, resolutely ignoring the stationary hovercraft outside the smashed wall (and the sheer hundred-foot drop to ground level), and the shouts and gunfire coming from the next room. She grabs the stupid toaster readings device and cradles it to her chest, and out of the window she sees Iron Man swooping past. Her heart leaps –

And then drops like a stone as a soldier appears in the wreckage of the lab doorway, standing squarely in front of her.

She’s lifting her stun-gun and diving for cover, shooting wildly upward, but she can see that her blasts have both missed and there’s another two goons coming in behind him and so she’s accepting that she's probably fucked.

Until there’s a red, white and blue shield arcing through the air and her opponent is crumpling to the ground.

‘Captain America!’ she exclaims, slightly dismayed that she’s in a situation life-threatening enough to need saving by a national icon. Steve pushes himself up over the ledge with one arm and lands lightly about a foot from the gaping hole in the wall, deftly catching his shield. Darcy blinks, then rolls up to her feet and calls a warning. ‘Careful, they have Iron Man style weapo – ’

Too late.

Another of the soldiers has a prime shot, and although he fudges it slightly, it catches Steve squarely in the shoulder, blasting him back into the room. Darcy’s breath catches in her throat as she takes in the charred layers of suit and flesh, and the way that his shield is bouncing out of his hand and rolling, useless, to the floor.

No, _not_ useless.

As the same soldier raises his gun to shoot again, Darcy dives forward, coming to a stop on her knees in front of the Captain. Everything seems to slow down as she twists, grabs the shield, lifts it clumsily, and brings it down in front of both of them.

The blast bounces off beautifully, and Darcy gives a sigh of relief, peeking over the shield to fire off one, two, three blasts from her stun gun. Suddenly, the room is quiet; it seems the fighting has moved elsewhere for now.

‘Took a hit to my shoulder in Doctor Foster’s lab,’ Steve rasps into his intercom. ‘Someone get over here whenever you can.’

Darcy twists around quickly, pulling the shield up over her head like a turtle shell to shelter them both. She looks at his shoulder first, but the flesh is already knitting back together, and so she gives another gusty sigh of relief. ‘Well, would you look at that,’ she says after a moment, words gushing into mouth before her shell-shocked brain has a chance to censor them, ‘looks like my buddy Joe from support group turned out to be Captain America! Swoon! No, I actually might swoon. Thanks for saving my life.’

He snorts, his breathing a little laboured. ‘Thanks for saving mine. I would’ve been toast if you hadn’t deflected that shot. Nice dive, by the way.’

She shrugs. ‘SHIELD basic training.’ She nods at his shoulder, then lays a hand on it gently. ‘But look, you’re healing up already. Doubt you’d really’ve needed me.’

He shakes his head, and she tries not to read too much into the way he leans into her touch. ‘Not much that accelerated healing can do about a bullet through the brain.’

There’s a yell from outside, and both their heads snap round, Darcy slipping into a crouch and holding the shield aloft. Now that her adrenaline is wearing down, she’s noticing just how goddamn heavy it is.

Thor flies past the window, sends a swift bolt of lightning flying somewhere off to the left, and then swoops into the room, his cape billowing around him. ‘Captain! I came as soon as I could, after I had assured the Lady Jane’s safety, and helped the Man of Iron in his efforts to storm the hovering craft...’ he draws up short. ‘Lady Darcy? Why are you holding the Captain’s shield?’ he steps forward, his brow creasing. ‘Steven, are your wounds grievous?’

‘He’s healing up pretty fast,’ Darcy says, looking to Steve for confirmation.

‘I should be fine within ten minutes,’ he says, nodding. Thor relaxes slightly, running a hand through his tangled blonde hair and smiling at them both.

‘But yeah, I’m totally his shield maiden now, dude,’ she says, grinning and waving her new weapon and almost wrenching her arm. ‘How are things out there?’

‘I dare to hope that we are gaining the upper hand,’ Thor says, looking slightly miffed, perhaps at the idea that his sworn sister has accepted the shield of another. Hard cheese, Darcy thinks. ‘But I fear I must return to the fray, lest any more of our comrades face peril.’ He raises his hammer in salute. ‘Will you require my help, Captain?’

‘No, you go, Thor. But if you see him, I’d appreciate it if you could send Barton up here to help Darcy with the lockdown.’

‘I will,’ Thor says solemnly. ‘Take care, Steven, Lady Darcy.’ And then he is gone in a flutter of scarlet fabric.

Darcy rocks back on her heels. ‘I will never get over the way he talks. Never.’

Steve gives a tired grin. ‘He’s always talking about you, you know. The Lady Darcy this and my sworn sister that. He seems to think that you’re some kind of guru in the ways of Midgard.’

‘I’m the closest thing to an average Jane that he’s met, is all.’ Darcy shakes her head fondly. ‘Because his actual Jane is nowhere near average; basically all of the company he keeps on this planet has pretty much transcended the Midgardian norm.’

Steve smiles again, but she sees that there’s a hint of pain in it.

‘Do you need anything? Disinfectant? Bandages?’ Darcy asks, berating herself for not asking before. ‘There’s a first aid kit in here somewhere...’

‘A dressing of some kind’ll help it heal faster,’ Steve says, ‘although it’s not necessary – ’

Darcy’s already on her feet and fetching the well-endowed SHIELD routine first-aid kit, pulling out a big compress and some medical tape. She squirts the compress liberally with disinfectant and holds it out.

‘Are you gonna be okay with doing this, or shall I?’

His moment of hesitation tells her all she needs to know.

‘Don’t worry, I’ll do it,’ she says, sitting down cross-legged in front of him.

‘But the labs – ’

Darcy shakes her head. ‘A good soldier never leaves a man behind. ‘Sides, the fighting seems to have moved for now, and someone should be up here to help me soon enough.’

Keeping the shield and her gun close at hand, she moves forward, helping Steve to prop himself into a more upright position, leaning against the wall. His brows are drawn together and his face is sweaty and soot-grimed under the cowl, but he’s still astonishingly beautiful, and for a few moments she finds herself just looking at him, drinking him in, before she collects herself and starts to clean up the wound with a sterile swab.

He hisses slightly at the pain, but doesn’t flinch away, and Darcy carefully cleans away the worst of the grime and dust before laying the compress over the healing wound, which has already reduced noticeably in size. She binds it in place with medical tape, and notices the way that Steve relaxes ever so slightly while she’s working, still alert and battle ready, but no longer ready to kill or be killed. It gratifies her, and it reminds her of the sunny weekend, which already seems like a long time ago, when he sat with them and ate cake and slowly but perceptibly started to look happier...

‘You seem pretty good with blood and stuff,’ Steve observes, after a few moments. His breathing is far more even, and although his words are still a little slow, it’s obvious that he’s not having to work so hard to think through the pain.

‘Thanks. Again, basic agent training,’ Darcy grins. ‘Also, a decade of dealing with periods inures you to these things.’ Steve gives a slightly startled laugh, and she wonders whether he’s wishing he was being patched up by someone less prone to inappropriate comments. Highly likely, though he’s polite enough not to let it show.

‘The nurses always used to say that women can’t afford to be squeamish,’ he says wryly after a moment, and Darcy snorts.

‘In our line of work, nobody can.’ She tears off the last piece of medical tape and lays it gently into place, slightly lifting the torn edge of his uniform to stick it down. ‘I’ve gotta say, though, in the moment, this stuff never seems to bother me.’ She hesitates, and then continues, ‘it’s only afterwards when you think about it that it starts to wear on you.’

Steve meets her eyes, and she thinks about how blue his irises are, how she knows girls who would pay good money for eyelashes like his, sandy blonde-brown and almost touching his cheek when he blinks. ‘Nightmares?’ he asks, quietly and gently.

She nods, biting her lip. ‘Turns out that my subconscious was taking really good notes when we were fleeing from that psycho space-mecha-robot thing in New Mexico.’ Then she remembers who she’s talking to, and thinks to ask, ‘uh, I don’t know if you were briefed on that.’

He nods. ‘First contact with Thor. It looked... well, damn terrifying.’ His lips quirk into a little half-smile and he looks down. ‘I heard you coped well with it, though.’

It takes her a moment to puzzle out how the fuck he would know that, and then she gives a startled laugh. ‘Captain Rogers, have you been reading my _file_?’

‘I have access!’ he protests, his cheeks turning slightly pink. ‘I should actually probably have done it a while back, what with you being part of Thor’s support team and all. But after, well, uh. I was curious.’ He looks up at her slightly nervously.

Darcy shakes her head, not sure whether to be offended or flattered. She’s done a fair amount of Facebook stalking in her time, but the idea that Captain freaking America was interested enough in her to take time out of his busy schedule and read up on her SHIELD documentation is slightly overwhelming. ‘Well, I guess now you know how a flighty three-major graduate like me ended up getting into SHIELD,’ she says, deciding that a joke is probably the best way to go from here. 'Poli-Sci student turned Dumb Intern turned secret agent... biggest fluke ever, huh?’

‘You’re not dumb,’ Steve says, quickly and with conviction. Darcy tries not to feel too chuffed at that.

‘I work with Tony Stark, Jane Foster and Bruce Banner. Some days it sure as hell feels like it,’ Darcy gives a sigh, fluttering her fringe, and notices with some satisfaction that there’s no blood leaking through the compress. Steve’s wound must be healing well.

‘Did Tony ever tell you about the time when the Helicarrier was going down and when he asked me to see what was wrong with one of the engines I told him I thought it ran on ‘some sort of electricity’?’ Steve says, nodding in commiseration. 

Darcy barks out a laugh. ‘What did he say?’

Steve grins. ‘ “Well, you’re not wrong”. He was remarkably restrained.’ He grimaces. ‘During the battle, anyway. He wouldn’t shut up about it over shawarma afterwards.’

Darcy wonders whether it’s the adrenaline, or whether this conversation is really as funny and relaxed and _natural_ as it feels. She should really be moving on, making sure that the other lab is okay – Steve will be fine without her hovering over him – and yet she _wants_ to stay, wants to make certain that he’s okay, wants to go on talking to him because there’s a part of her that’s sure he’s going to vanish in a puff of red, white and blue smoke the moment she turns her back. Because his Brooklyn accent is soothing her frayed nerves, and somehow he looks more innocent with the cowl pulled over the top half of his face. Because the late afternoon sunlight makes his eyes look even more vividly blue, and turns the dust motes around them to incandescent specks, dancing above the rubble of the wrecked lab. And his gloved fingers are resting on the ground just to the right of her knee, and his shield is at her back, and somehow she feels encircled and _safe..._

‘I’ve never had shawarma,’ she blurts after a moment. ‘Thor had a whole period of being obsessed with it, until I introduced him to Ben and Jerry’s ice cream.’ She shakes her head. ‘I’m slightly worried that between us, we’ve corrupted his godly palate forever.’

‘Ben and Jerry’s?’ Steve parrots slowly.

He sounds so much like her grandpa - curious and faintly suspicious - that Darcy has to bite the insides of her cheeks to stop herself laughing. She folds her arms, pasting on an expression of shocked seriousness. ‘No. Don’t tell me that you’ve been in this time zone for over a year and you still haven’t tried the ambrosia that is Ben and Jerry’s.’

‘Ambrosia.’ Steve repeats distractedly, shifting his position slightly. Darcy notices that he's letting his arm hang naturally, now, no longer tense with pain.

‘Just ask Thor.’ She frowns. ‘Although I think it was the Greek gods who had nectar and ambrosia, though...’

Steve hesitated for a moment, and then said, with a forced lightness: ‘well, how about I make you a deal. I’ll take you to that shawarma place for lunch, and then we can have Ben and Joe’s – ’

‘Ben and Jerry’s,’ Darcy corrects him automatically, hoping her voice doesn’t sound too unsteady. This can’t be happening. This is just one freak life event too far. She must be hallucinating because of the shock...

‘-right, Ben and Jerry’s. Uh. We can have Ben and Jerry’s afterwards?’ he looks at her, and Darcy’s heartbeat rachets up another notch as his many-shaded blue eyes search her face, his expression sweet and shy and breathtakingly earnest, despite his casual tone.

‘Sure, it’s a date,’ she says, before her stream-of-consciousness can stop shrieking for long enough to think up an appropriate response. She feels herself blushing to the roots of her hair, and tries not to flounder too obviously. ‘Although, obviously, don’t think I’ll be letting you pay. This is the twenty-first century, and I know how skint you must be after seventy years of backed-up paychecks...’

‘Agent Lewis, Captain America, are you alright?’

Both Steve and Darcy start, and Darcy whirls around, getting to her feet and letting Steve’s shield fall to the ground with a clatter. Behind her, she hears Steve pick it up and shuffle around a bit. She glances around and sees that he’s arranging himself into a slightly more upright posture against the wall, and she gives him a quick smile, which he tentatively returns.

Clint comes swinging through the hole in the wall, an arrow notched and his stern features drawn into the trademark Hawkeye ‘I’ll-kill-everyone-you-love-and-make-it-look-like-a-bloody-accident’ combat expression. As he assesses Darcy and Steve and discovers that they are essentially alive and well, he relaxes slightly, folding his arms across his chest and returning his arrow to its quiver.

‘Looks like you hardly needed me,’ he remarks. Darcy looks down, wondering whether it’s worth hoping that he’ll put her blush down to simple adrenaline. ‘Feel like a bit of a third wheel now.’

Darcy sighs and collects herself. ‘Eggsellent timing, Bird Brain. I just finished patching up the good captain, but you're here at the perfect moment to cover me put the rest of the lab into lockdown.’

‘Right-o,’ he says gamely, slinging his bow over one shoulder. ‘Cap, do you know how the lockdown system works?’

Steve shakes his head apologetically, and she’s satisfied to see that his cheeks are a little pink, too, although it’s another nail in the coffin for Clint’s presumptions. ‘I’d better get back out there.’

‘That's probably best, actually. Still a whole bunch of soldiers crawling around. You know how it goes: retreat’s makin’ em desperate,’ Clint shrugs. ‘You sure that arm’s okay?’

Steve grimaces and gets to his feet. ‘Should be. I’ll hold my shield in the other hand for now.’ He gets to his feet and nods at both of them before heading towards the broken-in door. ‘Agent Barton, Agent Lewis.’

‘Mind how you go, Captain,’ Darcy says, and she hopes that it doesn’t sound as earnest as it feels.

‘Always do,’ Steve says, flashing her a straight white smile that sends a fizzy, happy feeling shooting through her chest and down her spine. ‘And I wouldn’t wanna spoil your handiwork,’ he adds, gesturing to his shoulder.

She snorts and flaps her hand. ‘Handiwork, schmandiwork. Hopefully it’ll last you until you heal up or get to medical.’

‘Probably the former,’ Steve says, and she’s probably imagining it, but there’s something wistful in his tone. She remembers one of the rumours that she’s heard about him, this one affirmed by the ever-gossipy Tony: that no matter how hard he tries, he can’t get drunk. As he leaves, she wonders whether super-healing ever feels like a curse rather than a blessing.

‘Hey, Lewis? Lewis?’ Barton waves a hand in front of her face, and she turns to look at him with a start. She hastily assembles her poker face as she sees that he’s smirking.

‘So, you and capsicle?’ he nudges her exaggeratedly. ‘You bandaged his wounds and had deep, life-affirming discussions, huh?’

Darcy rolls her eyes. ‘Yes to the former, decidedly ‘no’ to the latter,’ she says, although she’s not at all sure about that. ‘Mostly we just discussed Thor and Ben and Jerry’s.’

Clint shrugs. ‘Fine, whatever. But next time you’ve got Rogers up against a wall and you whirl around blushing, I’m gonna start a betting pool.’

‘Don’t start getting ahead of yourself, Barton, or you’ll lose a lot of money,’ Darcy grins. The reality of the situation is slowly catching up with her - the fact that Steve effectively just _asked her out_ – and not even Clint’s prying will bring her down. She’s pretty certain that he knows that she’s ace; given all his hanging around in the air vents and so on, it would be a serious lapse if he’d let it slip his notice. But he’s never treated either of them any differently because of it, and for that she’s grateful.

His smirk widens. ‘Don’t worry, Lewis. With the intel I’ve got on you two, I’m gonna be able to _fleece_ the rest of the SHIELD liaison team.’

‘I would say: “you know what they say about eavesdroppers”, but if I’m honest, at this stage I doubt you care.’

‘Good call,’ Clint grins, hip-checking her and moving further into the room. ‘Now let’s get this lab into lockdown.’

***

Two days later, after the rubble has been cleared away (and Tony has turned the air blue upon discovering the culpable chink in his weapon security systems), Steve visits the labs again.

Midsummer sunlight streams through the windows, pale, fresh and gold. It's early; only a few scrubs and one wild-eyed looking technician who's clearly pulled an all-nighter are there to see him pass by. All of them are absorbed in their work, catching up after forty-eight hours of reduced access. None of them seem to notice as he reaches Darcy’s work-desk - newly reassembled, with a piece of wreckage balanced in one corner, presumably as a memento - and tucked a note under her monitor.

He wrote it out carefully half-an-hour beforehand, selecting his words with entirely too much thought for what was ostensibly just a meeting between colleagues.

_Dear Darcy,_

_I hope that you’re recovering well from the attack earlier this week. I was just wondering whether you’d be free next Monday is a good day to go get shawarma? My schedule is light so I could come by the lab at, say, 12 o’clock?_

_If there’s another day/time you’d prefer, I’ve written my cell number on the back of this note; give me a call and we can work something out, if you want.  
I hope you have a great weekend, and thanks again for picking up my shield. I would say ‘I had him on the ropes’, but I really didn’t. _

_All the best,_

_Steve_

Three hours later, his phone chirps. It takes him three frustrating minutes to find it in his bag and get it to the message centre, but when he does, his heart lifts.

_Sounds great! Except Jane wants to run exps. all day. T_T Evening suit you? 6pm, our lab?_

It takes him another five minutes to tap out a response, but somehow, he doesn’t mind.

_I’ll see you then! :)_

‘You look cheerful,’ Bruce observes, adjusting his glasses.

Steve shrugs. He can’t seem to stop smiling. ‘Just such a beautiful day, that’s all.’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to all of you for reading; I hope that you enjoyed it, and if you have any comments, questions or ideas for improvement, please drop me a comment and I'll answer you as best I can! :)


	3. I could wait a hundred hours

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve and Darcy have their shawarma date.

Steve has overdressed, and he knows it.

Now that he's actually outside Darcy's apartment, having rung the doorbell, he realises he's simply tried too hard: he has spent too long combing his hair into its grandpa style that Darcy probably hates, and his jacket is several shades too formal for shawarma, and his shoes are just too shiny for the twenty first century in general, where a cult of carelessness governs the sway of popular taste. So he shifts and tugs at his collar and regrets basically everything in his whole life as he waits for the door to open.

Maybe there would still be time to run away –

And then the door opens and Darcy is smiling at him, and a whole wodge of his nerves fall away as he takes in her face. She’s just so obviously pleased to see him, and as she reaches out a hand and pulls him inside, he lets out a breath he didn’t realise he was holding. He looks her up and down, and is relieved to see that her clothes aren’t that formal, either. A pretty skirt, sheer charcoal nylons, a deep purple blouse; her mahogany hair shining in an elegant braided twist.  She almost looks like she comes from his time, and for a moment his breath catches in his throat. He would love to draw her.

‘Steve, you came five minutes late!’ she’s saying now, twirling a little so that her skirt flares around her knees. ‘Thank you so much. I wasn’t ready, my bag was suddenly devoid of writing utensils and I don’t like to leave home without at least one. Biros vanish into an alternate dimension if you take your eye off them for ten seconds, I swear.’

Steve finds himself slipping easily into a conversation. ‘We should get Dr Foster onto that,' he suggests. 'Investigating the trans-dimensional behaviour of writing utensils.’ He pauses, then adds, because he feels like it would be rude not to, ‘I’m sorry I’m late, though. I was talking to Pepper and she said that if you’re picking a dame – a lady - up from her house, you should arrive late, and if you’re meeting her in a public place – ’

‘You should arrive early?’ Darcy says, grinning. ‘That is sound advice. I wouldn't expect anything less of Pepper.’ She raises her eyebrows. ‘I hope that you didn’t actually plan the trip to arrive precisely five minutes late, though. Some dates are punctualler than I am.’

Steve shakes his head, trying not to feel ludicrously pleased that she just said _date_. ‘Don't worry. I just spent a few minutes longer fixing my hair than I would have otherwise.’ He means it as a joke, but as her eyes flick up and down, he suddenly feels self-conscious.

‘It looks nice,’ Darcy reassures him, stepping forward. ‘We’ll definitely be the nicest-dressed couple at the shawarma place tonight. Which reminds me: does this joint let you take away?’

Steve nods. ‘I think I saw a sign saying it did.’

Darcy smiles. ‘What do you say we grab some and then drag it back to my lair?’

This sounds like an excellent idea to Steve; the only thing worse than messing things up with Darcy would be messing things up with Darcy _in public_. ‘Good plan. Means they’re less likely to look at me and realise that I look a lot like the guy in the Captain America suit who ate about fifteen kebabs straight after the battle of New York.’

‘Wait, wait,’ Darcy says, holding up a hand. ‘You went in there as Captain America?’

Steve sighs. ‘We were hungry, okay? And Tony said that he wanted to try shawarma.’

Darcy’s eyebrows travel another half inch up her face. ‘You were with _Tony?_ ’

‘And Natasha.’ Steve hesitates. ‘And Clint... And Bruce.’

‘The Avengers went to a random downtown takeaway straight after the Battle of New York, in full battle regalia, and ordered shawarma because of a whim of Tony’s.’ Darcy was grinning now. ‘I wish I’d seen it. You guys must have completely cleared them out.’

Steve nods. ‘We even picked the pieces of glass out of the fattoush that had been in the window. Before it got smashed in by aliens....’ Darcy starts to laugh, and so he adds defensively, ‘Tony gave them a really big tip afterwards, towards repairs...’

Darcy has to lean against the door frame because she’s laughing so hard. ‘I bet... that the dinnertime conversation... was really something to hear!’ she wheezes.

Steve smiles ruefully. ‘Actually, I think that we ended up eating in silence. We were all pretty beat.’

‘Fair enough,’ Darcy concedes. She manages to collect herself for long enough to push herself off the door frame, coming to stand in front of him. ‘But I think if we’re going to go into a place where you’ve been seen as Captain America, we should maybe change our look a little. Even if we're only gonna be there ten minutes.’

Steve snorts. ‘A disguise?’

Darcy darts over to a mirror and starts to untuck her blouse. Steve catches a flash of creamy white skin before the fabric falls to hang loosely over her hips. ‘No, just something that doesn’t scream RECENTLY DEFROSTED FORTIES COUPLE.’

Steve catches sight of himself in the mirror and takes her point. He untucks his own shirt and shrugs off his jacket, leaving it over the arm of the couch; then he steps toward Darcy, clearing his throat awkwardly.

‘Would you mind, um...’

‘I have wanted to mess up your hair for several months now, Steve,’ Darcy says as she whirls around, reading his mind. ‘Hold still, I’m gonna make you into a Thoroughly Modern Millie. Just you wait and see.’

‘Wha...?’

‘It was a sixties film, we’ll watch it sometime.’ Darcy steps forward and starts to gently tousle his hair, working it into a more natural style. Then she leans in a little. ‘Is that... English Leather aftershave I smell? _Tres_ retro.’

Steve rolls his eyes. ‘You seem very knowledgeable about men’s aftershave.’

‘I worked in a drugstore through one summer during college. My home town's pretty small, and the other shop assistant and I ended up getting so bored that we passed the time by smelling all the aftershaves and perfumes and assigning them to our favourite fictional characters. Seriously, we inhaled so many chemicals that I’m pretty sure I ended up tripping some afternoons... but I digress. English Leather is definitely preferable to Axe. And my grandad uses Old Spice, so you’re safe in that department, don't worry.’ She winks at him.

Steve can’t hide his chagrin at that. ‘Technically, I am old enough to be your grandfather.’

Darcy rolls her eyes. ‘But by that logic... you could never date anyone except for octogenerians.’ Steve winces, and he sees a flash of consternation in Darcy’s eyes. He feels bad; of course, Darcy doesn't know about his visits to Peggy, the way that he still loves her, but feels like a heavy veil has been drawn between them... the passage of the years have cut him off from the young, but also from the old. Steve shakes his head a little to clear away the thoughts; Darcy immediately withdraws her hands.

‘Am I looking contemporary enough yet?’ he says lightly, stepping back to inspect her handiwork in the mirror.

‘I would say so,’ she adds, her voice a little subdued. He can tell she regrets mentioning the age thing. ‘I’ll just do me quickly and then we’ll go.’

‘But your hair looks lovely like that!’ Steve protests. ‘Don’t feel you have to take it down.’

Darcy smiles a little. ‘Thanks, but I’m gonna be honest with ya, Steve, the bobby pins are digging into my scalp. This is just a way of claiming the moral high ground whilst letting my hair flow free and wild.’

Steve watches, slightly mesmerised, as Darcy deftly unbraids her hair, the thick brunette tresses falling to form rippling waves, like a dark sea against the pale shore of her neck. The bobby pins click into a little tray next to the mirror, one by one. Steve remembers helping the chorus girls with their hair before and after shows, still unused to his big new hands but learning quickly under their guidance. They would squeal and jab him whenever he pulled, but they always praised him for his smooth, regular braids, and they knew they could always trust him not to try anything in their dressing rooms, though many of them seemed quite perplexed by it...

‘Steve?’

He shakes his head, pulling himself out of memories of rocking lamps in sleeper carriages, corsets and stage makeup. ‘Darcy,’ he says, and then looks at her, properly. ‘You look lovely. Especially the flower.’ He didn’t see quite where she pulled it from, but it’s beautiful, a frippery made of ivory lace that sets off the dark glimmering mass of her hair.

‘I like to think that I’m doing boho chic, but I probably just look mental.’ Steve pastes on a smile as that goes over his head, but somehow Darcy notices. ‘Boho, short for ‘bohemian chic’. Came in the early 2000s. I think it was inspired by lots of people getting high whilst pretending to be hippies at Glastonbury – a music festival in England – which is where the ‘mental’ bit comes in. But the upshot of all this is that boho made it socially acceptable to wear flowers in your hair again, which is only a plus as far as I’m concerned.’ She peers at him. ‘Sorry, that probably made no sense. I have a tendency to spew random words at people.’

Steve shakes his head, smiling in spite of himself. ‘No, the fog has cleared a little now. And at least you actually try and explain, rather than just letting it sail over my head.’

Darcy’s face creases in sympathy. ‘The twenty-first century is a bitch if it doesn’t share its in-jokes with you. Let me know if you ever hear anything that you want translated, okay?’

‘So you'd say you're a qualified interpreter, then?’ Steve jokes, hoping to get that serious look off her face. He wishes desperately that he didn’t need her pity.

‘I don't know. My general knowledge isn’t shoddy and I have chain-watched way too many cult movies whilst procrastinating for finals.’ Darcy shoots him another of her big red-and-white grins, kicking off her brogues and peeling off her tights as she does so. ‘I was gonna be way too hot, anyway, there’s like a desert wind blowing out there,’ she explains, as Steve clears his throat and hastily averts his gaze. She shoves her feet into a pair of dusty white sandals, and then offers him her arm. ‘Shall we?’

‘I thought you’d never ask,’ Steve murmurs, taking it. As Darcy locks the door behind them, he catches a scent of the dusty summer air, blowing up the stairwell, and suddenly the evening feels exciting, full of possibility. He’s never done anything quite like this before, and the idea thrills him as much as it frightens him. This is uncharted territory, but he’s ready to start exploring.

**-O-**

Darcy knew that all the Avengers have high-energy lifestyles, but Steve... Steve is something else. She fervently hopes that the guy behind the till wasn't on duty when Steve came in as Captain America; surely Steve is recognisable through his appetite alone.

She thinks sadly back to the four tubs of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream waiting at home, and admits to herself that Steve is going to have to be allowed three of them. And there she was hoping to have some left over for tomorrow.

‘You are so gonna carry these bags, Stevey,’ she says allowed, as the brown paper packages stack up on the counter. ‘It's that, or I'll collapse under the sheer weight of food that we are taking back to my apartment.’

Steve shoots her a look that is equal parts amused, exasperated and self-conscious. ‘Of course I’ll carry the bags, Darcy,’ he says, and there’s a little edge of old-fashioned chivalry in there that makes Darcy simultaneously melt a little and grind her teeth.

Similarly, when the (thankfully oblivious) chashier finally rings up their total, Steve reaches for his wallet before Darcy can even start rummaging in her purse. It takes a moment for him to even notice her pointed look, and even then he starts to shake his head vehemently.

‘Darcy, I’m gonna be eating most of it anyway...’

Darcy scrounges up fifteen dollars and hands it over. ‘There’s my contribution. I will be beholden to no man to pay for my meals, even if he eats as much as you.’

The guy behind the counter gives her an admiring sort of glance, and she grins back at him as she hands the money over. But when Steve rubs the back of his neck awkwardly and gives her a kind of impressed-bout-wounded expression, she takes pity on him and gently bumps an arm against his.

‘You can still carry everything home, don’t worry,’ she assures him.

Once they’re out of the shawarma place and weaving their way amongst the crowds of people in an attempt to jolt their bags as little as possible, Steve heaves a sigh. ‘I’m sorry about that. I clearly... I have a bit of an old-fashioned outlook on how to treat women.’ He gives a rueful smile. ‘And I was never all that good at it.’

Darcy chuckles and shakes her head. ‘You’re not bad at all. I'm just fussy.' When he looks unconvinced, she adds vehemently, 'believe me, I’ve seen _far_ worse.' She considers, and then goes on, 'but if you wanted to improve further, I have a top tip for treating pretty girls that I think may interest you. A golden rule, if you will.’

Steve looks at her from over the pile of takeaway bags, eyebrows raised, earnestly interested. ‘And what might that be?’

‘Just treat them,’ Darcy pauses dramatically – ‘like anybody else that you’d be interacting with. Pretty girls aren’t a different species or anything. They're all just regular people: outgoing, or awkward, or shy as fuck, or totally bitchy, whatever. You’ve just got to get to know them like you would anyone else. And try not to let the fact that they attract or intimidate you get in the way of that.’ She shoots him a glance, and is gratified to see that he’s hanging on her every word. ‘Maybe you have it easier than most guys because you don’t actually want to get into anyone’s pants...’

Steve laughs at that. ‘I never understood why people said that Peggy was a distraction at work, why they couldn’t just treat her like any other agent when she was working in her official capacity. That fits with what you’re saying...’

It’s the first time that Peggy has come up between them, and Darcy doesn’t want to make too big a thing of it, but her heart is in her mouth and she can’t talk so lightly anymore. ‘Yeah, you hear so much about sexual harassment in the workplace, and sexism, too... a lot of people still can’t seem to switch it off, even in these supposedly enlightened times. Some people still seem to view women as objects of desire - or contempt, depending on how young and attractive they are. Not just people to be worked with.’ She hesitates, and then adds, ‘Peggy was working for SHIELD well into her sixties. Clint told me that right up until the day she retired, a boardroom fell silent when she walked in.’ She smiles uncertainly at Steve, who is staring forward up the road. ‘She was a trailblazer, and no mistake. Though... you probably know all that.’  

Steve nods absently, but says nothing. Darcy wonders whether she’s said too much. As usual.

She holds the door of the apartment block open for him, and, because he’s Steve, they take the stairs. Laden as he is, she has to jog to keep up.

As they stumble into the apartment and put down all the bags on the counter, Steve reaches out and takes her hand. She stiffens, but doesn’t pull away. ‘Thank you,’ he says, quietly and fervently.

She’s surprised. ‘For what?’

‘For... for talking about her. Just like a person. For not clamming up and looking at me like some kind of grenade.’ He smiles, and she thinks his eyes are a bit too bright. ‘It means a lot.’

Darcy laughs, her relief rendering her a little shaky. ‘And there I was thinking I’d royally put my foot in it.’

Steve gives a watery chuckle. ‘Nope. I’m just a bit of an emotional sap.’

Darcy punches his shoulder. ‘How dare you have man-pain! Captain America isn’t allowed _feelings_!’

He laughs properly at that, and then turns around and starts to unpackage the first lot of shawarma. ‘Not even hunger?’

Darcy looks into his beautiful blue eyes and tries not to smile too stupidly. ‘I suppose we could make an exception for hunger,’ she allows. ‘As long as you leave a bit for me.’

‘You’d better hurry up and grab some, then,’ Steve says, between mouthfuls.

Darcy rolls her eyes and pulls the nearest bag towards her. She pulls out a beef wrap and then gets to her feet. ‘You want something to drink? Water, coca cola, beer? I have some juice, but if you have juice I might disown you for mixing vice and virtue...’

‘A coke sounds good,’ Steve calls. Darcy gets a beer for herself and cracks the top off.

‘That’s a nice bottle opener,’ Steve says, looking at the laquered wooden object in her hands. ‘Old-fashioned.’

‘I got it when I was on an expedition in Kenya. They use them all over, there.’ She holds it up. 'Just a screw embedded in wood. Cheaper to produce than an all-metal one.’

‘When did you go to Kenya?’ Steve asks, sounding slightly envious.

‘College trip, a school partnership scheme. The people are so friendly, I had an amazing time. _So_ worth working in a bar 'till two in the morning for nine months.’ Darcy had always been a ‘what financial difficulties?’ sort of girl; the number of money-pots she’d chased up when she was trying to make the sums work out for Culver didn’t bear thinking about.

‘Have you ever been to anywhere in Africa?’ she asks, now. She knows that her grandfather was part of some campaigns in the North of the continent, but from what she’s read about the Captain, most of his action took place on the Western front...

‘Not before the iceberg,’ Steve said, with what sounded like a practised lightness. ‘But I went on a mission to Egypt last year. An MI6 job went badly wrong.’ He shrugged. ‘Didn’t get much of a chance to look around.’

Darcy puts her beer down on the table and gazes appreciatively down at her shawarma. The greasy, aromatic scent of slow-roasted meat drifts up towards her, and suddenly she feels starving. She bites into it and gives an appreciative groan.

‘Do you get time off?’ she asks, with her mouth full. ‘For holidays, I mean?’

‘Evil never sleeps,’ Steve says, in his best Captain America voice. It’s funny, because even when he’s sending himself while demolishing takeaway, he still looks so handsome and virtuous and noble that she almost feels bad for laughing.

‘Seriously, though. If you wanted to take some time off, would they let you?’

Steve considers. ‘I think so. I’d have to be prepared to drop everything and come back, though, if there was a real emergency. But I suppose the same goes for you.’

‘Yeah, and I don’t even have a supersoldier paycheck to make up for it,’ Darcy huffs, reaching for her beer.

Steve smiles, but he’s quiet for a while, looking down at his food and chewing in silence. Darcy takes the opportunity to survey him, focussing on the details: the way he eats like he's not quite sure where his next meal's coming from; the near-perfect posture that comes with a lifestyle and a body like his, even when he's slumped on the sofa; the spiky bits of his hair that are catching the light, glowing gold against the darkened window.

She would never have seen it coming, not in a million years; she's still not quite sure just what she's done to earn even one date with someone like Steve Rogers. Someone so attractive, and well-meaning, and funny, but, mostly importantly, someone who _understands_. Someone who can appreciate the strangeness and wonder of living a life like hers, without secrets and half-truths. The aliens, SHIELD and the frontiers of science are a part of what they share, but the knowledge of who they are - their queerness, their otherness, as self-aware aces - is at least as important. Darcy knows that even if they don’t discuss it, there’s a huge relief in knowing for certain that they share this common ground. She can’t even begin to comprehend how lucky she is to have found him... even for a little while.

‘Hey, Steve,’ she says softly after some time has elapsed. ‘You want another coke?’

He leans back into the couch, his shoes kicked off under the table, and it makes her feel warm and fuzzy that he already seems to feel at home. ‘Actually, a beer would be nice,’ he answers tentatively.

She shoots to her feet. ‘Mwahaha! I knew that I would eventually succeed in leading Captain America off the straight and narrow!’ She dances over into the kitchen area.

‘It’s not like I’ve never had a beer before,’ he calls after her. ‘And besides, I can’t get drunk!’

‘Tony is working on the issue, darling,’ she responds, before remembering that that information was _classified._ This is why she would make a terrible agent. ‘But for now, you can just savour the flavour and let the placebo effect take hold.’

‘You mean, if I start believing that I’ll get drunk, I will?’ Steve – perhaps rightly – sounds sceptical.

‘Look, I’m just trying to find short term solutions here. If you want to stay sober as a judge as I not-so-gradually become tipsy, be my guest.’ Darcy lobs a beer and the bottle-opener towards Steve's head, and he catches them both perfectly. Sickening, really.

‘I begin to see your logic,’ he concedes, taking a hearty swig.

**-O-**

Two wraps later, Darcy spots the corner of a sketchbook poking out of the corner of Steve’s bag. ‘Hey, you did bring it!’ she exclaims, rushing forward to hoik it out. 'I thought that you'd forgotten - '

‘Be careful with that!’ Steve’s voice rockets up an octave, and he lunges forward like she’s got a live baby dangling by its ankle.

Darcy gives a hasty 'sorry', but she's already too busy admiring the intricate designs that he’s inked onto the front cover to return it to the bag. ‘I promise not to get shawarma on it,’ she promises Steve, and he relaxes slightly. ‘But I am so glad I took this out. Even the cover is amazing.’

Every part of it is different, merging from rough-looking branches to Middle Eastern-style geometry to art nouveau flowers. He’s used up several pens decorating it, by the looks of things. It’s an excellent diversion tactic, she thinks admiringly, distracting people with the outside of your sketchbook so that they never even open it.

‘Can we look through it later?’ she says, laying it carefully down on top of his bag again. 'When I'm done with my greasy takeaway?' She feels a little bad for prying.

Steve looks bashful. ‘If you still want to.’

‘Still want to?’ Darcy echoes incredulously. ‘Dude. They say that you should never judge a book by its cover, but if I’m gonna go right ahead and say if the content is anything like that, you must be fucking amazing. Seriously, you could retire from SHIELD and become an artist if you wanted.’

Steve brushes the compliment off, but Darcy notices that it takes a little while for him to stop smiling.

**-O-**

‘This,’ Steve says, holding up his carton reverently, ‘is one of the finest works ever made by human hands.’

‘I know, right?’ Darcy chips in, digging enthusiastically into her own chocolate Fudge Brownie ice cream. ‘Ben and Jerry’s truly is ambrosia, I told ya. And _furthermore – ’_ she always uses long words when she starts getting tipsy – ‘they have a policy that the highest pay bracket can only be paid like seven times as much as the lowest, and everything is organic. So you can feel good about yourself whilst you eat it.’

Steve hums in agreement. Darcy watches with wide eyes as he digs out a gargantuan slab of Caramel Chew Chew and stuffs it, whole, into his mouth.

‘You are so going to get a brain freeze,’ she prophesies, ‘you are going to get _such a bad brain freeze.’_

Seconds pass. Steve chews vigorously.

‘...Oh, COME ON! You have to get a brain freeze after a mouthful that big! That was like a quarter of the carton in one whack! It’s not fair!’

Steve swallows and opens his mouth.

‘Don’t say it,’ Darcy growls.

‘Super Soldier perks, Darce,’ he smirks, holding up his hands in faux appeasement. ‘Nothing I can – mph!’

‘You deserved that,’ Darcy pronounces, observing with satisfaction that a cushion to the head has thoroughly messed up the last vestiges of Steve’s neat hairstyle. He now looks ever so slightly like a hedgehog. Steve gives her a mournful stare.

‘You made me drop my spoon,’ he complains, picking it up from the floor. ‘And now it has _carpet fluff_ on it.’

‘Go and wash it under the tap, then. Super Soldier, my ass,’ she jibes, taking a triumphant bite of frozen brownie.

As Steve heads over into the kitchen, grumbling a little, she sees him spare an admiring glance for her electronic photo frame; he’d already commenting on it once, saying that he’d like to meet the guy who came up with that ‘swell’ idea. (That had made her giggle.) This time, however, the picture that he sees makes him stand still.

‘Who’s this, Darcy?’ he asks, his voice deliberately light. She can sense, though, that there's a tension in it, too.

Darcy puts down her spoon and comes forward. There are hundreds of photos cycling on that thing, it could be literally anyone... She sees a picture of her with her arms wrapped round a skinny, dark haired, bespectacled boy, just before the frame rolls onto a picture of her and an old high school friend doing the cha-cha slide in full Ninja outfits. (That had been a good Halloween party.)

She doesn’t quite understand why the previous photo is the one that’s stopped Steve in his tracks.

‘The guy, you mean?’ she asks. When he nods, she answers as succinctly as she can.

‘He was called Alex, I met him in Freshman year. Really talented musician, and super funny. We went out for about two months but then he graduated and we weren’t really long-distance material...’ she trails off, and then decides to come straight out with it. ‘Steve, is there some kind of problem with this?’

‘No!’ Steve exclaims, sounding so surprised that she’s wrong-footed for a moment. ‘Just... he was shorter than you.’

Darcy feels her eyebrows raise a few notches. ‘Yeah.’

‘And skinny.’

‘Yeah.’

‘And he had glasses.’

She’s starting to feel quite defensive now. ‘He had asthma, too, but what is your point with all of this?’ She folds her arms. 'If you're gonna have a problem with all my previous relationships, Steve, I can't - '

Bizarrely, Steve is smiling. ‘No, no! Nothing like that, don't worry. It’s just... well... he reminds me a bit of myself. How - how I was.’

The penny drops, and Darcy can’t help but come forward and give Steve a tight hug. For a moment, neither of them speaks.

She realises that Steve must have been worrying about this, quietly, to himself: the super soldier factor, and how much of a part it played in their relationship. She thinks about it, very, very honestly, asking herself the difficult questions: would she have made the effort with Steve, if it wasn’t for his looks? If she’d just met him in college, say, or at work; a wry but idealistic Brooklander who never turned his back on anybody? Would she have seen past the lacklustre exterior and realised how special he was?

Maybe. And, from the way that Steve was looking at her now, he certainly seemed to think she might have.

‘I don’t know, Steve,’ she mumbles against him. ‘I like to think I would have carried on pestering you no matter what you looked like. I mean, it’s not like I’m approaching this from an ‘I would hit that’ perspective, anyway.’

She feels Steve nod against the top of her head. ‘I believe you. But... I mean, I wouldn’t hold it against you. It’s... difficult... hanging around with someone who’s always gonna be sicker and weaker than you are. Bucky was really the only one who – ’ he breaks off, and she feels him swallow.

‘Jeez, are you saying something about me?!’ Darcy demands, trying to smooth over the painful moment with humorous indignation. ‘I’m always gonna be sicker and weaker than you are. So I guess you’re gonna have to channel some of Bucky's patience for as long as you can be bothered to put up with me.’

Steve laughs, and she can tell that he's relaxing as the sound vibrates through them. ‘I don't think I'll need that much patience. Seems to me you're pretty tough.’

**-O-**

Later, when she’s flicking through his sketchbook, she comes across a drawing of her.

‘Is this... from memory?’ she asks, her voice cracking slightly. ‘If so, get out, you’re too talented to live.’

Steve ducks his head. ‘Mostly. Jane has a photo of you and her and Thor on her desk in the lab...’

‘I know, I put it there, her desk was too sad and empty,’ Darcy says, grinning.

‘And I was in there waiting for Thor last week, and... well, I tidied it up a bit...’

‘When did you start drawing it?’ Darcy asks.

Steve smiles sheepishly. ‘The night after that first meeting. I just... you were on my mind. Among other things.’

Darcy hugs the sketchbook to her chest for a moment, trying not to grin too stupidly, and then passes it over to him. ‘Here, do you have any pencils on you? Could you draw me now?’ She leans back into the sofa cushions and places a hand on her hip. ‘Draw me like one of your French girls, Steve.’ He looks blank for a moment, and she mentally berates herself. ‘It’s a reference to – ’

‘Wait, Titanic?’

‘Yep! Gold star for rapid cultural recall. We’ll make an alienated twenty-first century citizen of you yet, my dear.’

Steve’s pencil is already working rapidly over the page, and after a moment he holds up a lightning sketch of her. It’s just a figure, really – her form sprawled across the sofa, gesticulating – but she can immediately recognise the pose as hers.

‘Not bad, not bad. And how about this face?’ she sucks in her cheeks and bugs out her eyes until she looks like a slightly affronted goldfish.

‘Hold that one.’

Darcy makes an affronted sound.

‘You did ask for it...’

She can’t argue with that, and so she holds the pose until her cheeks ache, slowly tipping her head from side to side. Eventually, her never-stellar patience runs out. ‘If my momma could see me now she’d tell me that the wind was gonna change and I’d be stuck that way.’

Steve grins, looking up. ‘My mom used to say that to me, too. Some things never change...’ a shadow briefly crosses his face, but he seems to wipe it away through sheer force of will, passing Darcy the sketchpad with another smile. ‘There you go. Beautiful, as always...’

Darcy takes the pad and shouts with laughter. Somehow, seeing her guppy face immortalised in Steve’s sketchbook – he’s even added a little ‘S.R.’ at the bottom – makes it about three hundred times more hilarious.

‘We should do a whole series of these,’ she suggests, ‘with all the Avengers, Jane and Pepper. And maybe Hill and Fury, too.’

Steve gives her an expression equal parts amused and disturbed. ‘Fury wouldn’t let you finish asking for that pose before he disappeared you into a bunker in Kansas for the rest of your days. That is, if Pepper didn’t get you first.’

‘Meh,’ Darcy shrugs, ‘you’ve got to suffer for Great Art.’

**-O-**

Darcy thought that Steve had forgiven and forgotten the fact that she threw a sofa cushion at him.

But a Howling Commando never forgets.

When Darcy comes back from the kitchen after fetching the last tub of Ben and Jerry’s, three cushions hit her in the face in quick succession. And Captain America is no slack when it comes to throwing things.

‘Oh no, Capsicle,’ she says, once she’s got over her shock enough to speak. ‘You don’t know what you’ve got yourself into. There’s a dangerous gleam in her eye. Suddenly, Steve begins to regret his life choices, although he physically cannot stop laughing.

Darcy leans forward, gently places the ice cream on the table, and then reaches for a cushion. Steve gulps and adopts a combat position.

Darcy lunges towards him with a blood-curdling battle cry – and then the fight is on.

**-O-**

They move from cushion fighting to pillow fighting, and then from pillow fighting to pillow fort-making, until eventually they end up slumped against the side of the bed in Darcy’s room, weak with laughter and surrounded on all sides by cushions and pillows... some of them looking rather the worse for wear. Steve is sporadically taking down books from Darcy’s shelf, so that they can open them at opportune pages and read bits out loud to each other. Darcy talks Steve through the books that he hasn’t read, and argues with him about the ones he has. At the moment, she’s reading aloud from a modern poetry anthology.

 _‘Your love comes down rich as the warm spring rain,’_ she reads. Their fight has left a very faint sheen of sweat glistening on her brow, and her hair is falling all around her face. Steve wants to run his hand through it, and then skim his thumb along the shell of her ear. But he’s afraid that if he does that, she’ll stop reading.

 _‘Now it charges like a tawny dark maned lion._  
_Now it envelopes me in wraiths of silken mist._  
_Now it is a thick hot soup that sustains me._ ’ She looks up at him, her eyes warm. _‘So you are loving,’_ she finishes, her voice unusually soft.

Steve clears his throat. ‘What... did you say that one was called?’

 _‘Raisin Pumpernickel_ , by Marge Piercy.’ Darcy rests her chin on her hand. ‘It’s one of my favourite love poems.’ She shoots him one of her captivating grins, just as she had when he was saying goodbye to her outside the metro, on that blazing afternoon when he’d just reshuffled everything he thought he knew about her. ‘One of the only ones about sex that makes me understand what people actually like about it.’

Steve ducks his head, feeling a little embarrassed, but captivated, too.  ‘What do you mean?’ he asked quietly.

‘As a way of forging a connection with someone, tying yourself to someone you love.’ Darcy closes her eyes. ‘The idea of sex itself turns my stomach... but I think I  understand the sentiment behind it.’

For a moment, neither of them speak. Steve wishes that he felt confident enough to lean down and kiss her, to put his arms around her and just hold her beside him, but he doesn’t want her to misinterpret the gesture – for her to think that he’s after anything except for the physical contact in itself. Closeness as a basis for trust. And... and tender feelings. He doesn’t even want to think the word _love,_ it’s too early for that, it would only scare her off. But when he looks into her eyes and lets himself return her smiles, he can’t help but think it might be possible...

Then Darcy gives a cavernous yawn, and he loses his train of thought. This pillow fort is soft and warm, and it's making him feel sleepy, too. ‘What’s the time?’ she asks, squinting her eyes open. ‘If you say ‘time to get a watch’, I might actually slay you.’

Steve raises his eyebrows at the idle threat but lifts his wrist nonetheless. ‘It’s... holy cow, it’s ten to one!’ He looks at her, slightly perplexed. ‘How is it ten to one?’

She leans back in the pile of pillows. ‘I guess time flies when you’re risking your life during a fraught cushion attack. Or, you know. Having fun.’ She looks up at him tentatively, and hesitates before saying: ‘you wanna head home, or should we put the pillows back on the bed now?’

**-O-**

In the end, Steve insists on taking the couch. Darcy knows that he _could_ go home, in theory, but it sits badly with her to send him off into the night, cold and alone, after the evening they’ve had. So she lends him a toothbrush and one of the huge T-shirts she uses as nighties and tells him that he’d better be making breakfast tomorrow. He’s so polite that she still finds it difficult to tell whether he’s doing what he wants or what he thinks she wants, but she’s never been the type to spend twenty minutes in a battle of courtesies, and so she can only hope that he won’t be _too_ squashed.

If the don’t-let-him-stay-over-‘till-the-third-date code applies for aces, she has just totally just violated it. But she thinks that their relationship is unconventional enough that she can metaphorically throw normal dating guidelines into the wind, probably whilst laughing maniacally, if she wants to. It’s not like _Cosmo_ is ever going to approve.

Even if she has just had a rollickingly successful date with Captain America.

For a while, she just sits there, listening to Steve breathing and letting the reality of it sink in. He’s right here, and she hasn’t made him run away screaming, and she thinks – she _thinks_ – that she can feel the beginnings of something really special.

She doesn’t want to jinx it by getting ahead of herself. Hell, sometimes she hardly wants to _breathe_ when she’s around him, in case she scares him off, in case she gets too much for him. Usually she blusters her way past those moments, but still. In the quiet lulls of the conversation, when she just looks at him, tracing the slightly anxious lines on his forehead and the hesitant movements of hands that still don’t quite know their strength... tonight, in those moments, she was torn between reaching for him and retreating before she passed the point of no return.

It takes her a while to fall asleep, and when she does, her dreams quickly give way to nightmares. She’s back in New Mexico, with the destroyer sending dust stinging into her eyes and throat. Her eardrums feel like they’ll burst at the roaring noise of it, and she shakes the hale old woman who lives opposite the diner, the best rider in the district, capable of quieting a half-wild two-year stallion with a few calm words. She’s lying on the ground, her leg crushed by a piece of rubble, a cut bleeding into her salt-and-pepper hair. Darcy’s trying to move her to safety, and they both know that she’ll never ride again, and the Destroyer is bearing down on them, remorseless and so _fucking loud Darcy has to –_

‘Darcy!’ there’s a voice in her ear, a male voice, and a hand on her shoulder, sliding slightly against cold sweat. ‘Darcy, it’s gonna be okay. It was just a nightmare.’

‘I... you... wha?’ Darcy can still feel the scream that has burnt up her throat, but everything is blessedly dark, quiet and soft. ‘Steve?’ She feels tearful, and as her eyes start to tingle Steve is already moving forwards to cradle her in his arms. She buries her face in his T-shirt, and within a few minutes there’s a sizeable patch of it that’s soggy with her tears.

‘Ssshh, sshh,’ he soothes wordlessly, rubbing small circles on her back, and pulling her closer despite the fact that she’s being _pathetic_ right now, he’s gone through a hundred times’ more circles of hell than she ever will, and how _dare_ she melt down on him? ‘It was just a nightmare, Darcy. Just a bad dream.’

‘I’m... I’m sorry...’ she takes a few deep breaths. She _will_ get it together, so help her.

He hugs her still tighter, and the air is squeezed momentarily out of her lungs by the force of it. ‘You have nothing to apologise for.’ He gives a little laugh. ‘I thought that you were really being attacked. I’m just relieved I haven’t brought a whole bunch of bad guys crashing around your apartment.’

With a colossal effort, she manages to form a coherent sentence. ‘It would be worth it, for that pillow fight.’

She manages to get another laugh out of him for that, and she finds herself smiling against his shoulder, her eyes still wet and hot from the tears.

After a moment, Steve draws in a breath. After a moment, he asks, quietly: ‘can I ask what it was about?’

She nods. ‘The time when the... the Destroyer... it attacked our little town in New Mexico. I’m sorry, do you know – ’

‘I was briefed. Intel on asgard.’

‘Right, right.’ She gives a juddery sigh. ‘Well, not everyone made it out unscathed. I was getting people to safety, and... well... we were working under fire and...’

‘I know exactly what you mean.’ Steve says it with too much conviction, and then Darcy has to ask.

‘Do you get nightmares too? About... about the moments you thought you wouldn’t – pull through?’

Steve hesitates, and then says, ‘sometimes.’ A pause. ‘Often.’

Darcy wraps her arm more firmly around him. ‘Normally there’s nobody to hear me wake up with a yell, so... in the daytime, it’s easy to forget about it.’

Steve nods. ‘Pretend it didn’t happen.’

‘Especially when I think about the people I work with. Stark, Jane, Dr Banner...’ she shudders. ‘They’ve all gone through way more shit than me. Hell, _you’ve_ gone through way more shit than me. And they don’t complain about waking up crying like babies.’

Steve says something so quietly that Darcy doesn’t immediately catch it. ‘What was that, Cap?’ she says. In his warm embrace, enjoying the cathartic effects of a good cry, she’s starting to feel sleepy.

‘I said: maybe we can complain to each other?’ he repeats. It’s still quiet, and so tentative that his voice suddenly sounds ten years younger. Darcy feels something warm spreading out from somewhere around her solar plexus, and she leans closer to reply, whispering right in his ear.

‘I would really, really like that,’ she says.

After that, everything is a bit hazy.

Steve gets her a glass of water, and she knocks it back, her body eager to replace the water she’s lost. Weirdly, she remembers blowing her nose. She’s fairly sure that she asks Steve to stay with her until she falls asleep, and she definitely recalls laying her head against his chest and pulling the duvet over them both. And after that, everything is dark and warm and quietness.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can't express how surprised, grateful and elated I am at all the lovely kudos, comments and bookmarks I've received for this story. I never in a million years expected a response like this, and every time I get a new comment in my inbox it makes my day. Again, I'm so sorry that you've had to wait so long, and I hope that this chapter meets your expectations. As always, constructive criticism is always welcome! :)
> 
> Nb: the chapter title comes from the song 'Quiet' by Lights.


	4. Your Lack of Blowing Over

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Darcy compares her relationship with Steve to a pot plant, Steve discovers the concept of a work-life balance and everyone waits for the weather to break. Be careful what you wish for.

_You can smile like a silly kid_  
_or make the fun out of any whim_  
_change my life, add it up_  
_if pines whip and I sit,_  
_will it be enough?_  
_What would change if you fell in love?_  
_all that I’m dreaming of._

_''_ First Flying V', Gregory and the Hawk

***

When she wakes up, everything seems very quiet and still. She just lies still, for a while, tucked under Steve’s arm as he lies on his back. After a bit, she props herself up on her elbow and looks at him. She’s happy – more than just happy – to see that he’s relaxed and calm, his mouth slightly open as he breathes gently in and out. He looks so much more carefree. He’s not a soldier, or a hero: he’s just a young man, and suddenly, it doesn’t seem so intimidating to have Captain America lying beside her.

She tries to snuggle back into place without disturbing him, but inevitably his blue eyes slide open. Some of the care seeps back into his expression.

‘Darcy,’ he says, tentative, and she’s at a loss as to why until she realises that she has almost no memory of how he got into her bed. Frowning, she thinks back, and the vague impressions of darkness and terror swirl to the surface of her brain.

‘Did I have a nightmare?’ she asks, feeling a little vulnerable. She doesn’t remember much of the night before.

Steve nods. ‘I stayed with you until you fell asleep. But I think I must have fallen asleep too...’

‘I’m sorry about that,’ Darcy sighs. In the morning, everything seems so much easier to process, and the details that she remembers embarrass her. She probably cried, didn’t she? She hates the fact that the dreams make her cry.

He shakes his head. ‘It could just as easily have been me.’ He leans forward and tentatively places an arm around her waist, his expression so earnest and caring that Darcy can’t help but smile.

‘Well, thank you for being so cool,’ she says, hoping the words sound a little less heavy than they feel. There is too much emotion stirring up inside her, too much investment for someone she’s only known five minutes. Inconvenient fireworks. When he looks at her, like that, her heart doesn’t get the memo to act casual. In fact, it seems to get the opposite kind of memo.

Luckily, she is dragged from the metaphorical quicksand of her feelings by Steve’s stomach – rumbling, very loudly.

‘Come on, Captain,’ she grins, pushing off the bed and padding towards the window to let light in. ‘I think that’s our cue to drag ourselves out of bed and make breakfast.’

Five pancakes, eight rashers of bacon and a big mug of coffee later, the emotion seems a little more manageable. Although Steve won’t stop giving her those blue-eyed smiles that make her face scrunch up into an embarrassingly huge grin in return.

***

There’s something about Sam Wilson that always makes Steve feel lighter in himself. In part, it’s because of everything the other man stands for: his dark skin and his easy confidence as a highly trained professional symbolising the progress of their country, reminding Steve that there were so many things waking up for.

But it’s also just the way that Sam is, and the way that he treats Steve: not something to be gawked at, or particularly looked up to. He doesn’t constantly try to prove himself to Steve, like so many of the agents. He just gives him the same casual, friendly camaraderie as any other guy on the track, and so somehow over the months he’s become Steve’s regular running partner. Nothing rigid; they just always let each other know when they’re going to be there next. Steve would even tentatively say that they’re friends.

‘Didn’t see you yesterday,’ Sam comments, not resentfully or even nosily; just out of friendly curiosity. Steve shrugs, hesitates, and then just goes for it. He didn't leave Darcy's apartment until noon the day before, and his mind is still too full of their time together for him to think up a convincing lie. 

‘Yeah. I was with... I had breakfast with someone.’ He smiles, remembering Darcy’s laugh as she’d tried to turn over the pancakes and ended up tearing them in half, and her rapid trip down the bodega in pyjamas to go and get more eggs while he supervised the bacon. ‘Real nice cooked breakfast. It took us a while.’

He puts of a spurt of speed and laps Sam. The other man sighs a little, used to it by now. When Steve pulls up beside him again, Sam glances over at him, grinning a bit. ‘You a good cook, Captain?’

‘We mostly just boiled stuff in my day,’ Steve jokes, ‘but I can handle a dodgy frying pan pretty good. This girl – Darcy, her name is – ’ Sam doesn’t really move in the same circles as Steve, so Steve doesn’t have to worry about dropping names – ‘she can put away her food like nobody’s business.’

‘Not like you, though, I’d wager,’ Sam says. ‘I remember the first time we got burgers after running. I still think that you’ve gotta have a wormhole in your stomach or something, man. Better get that checked out.’

 _Wormhole._ He’d watched Brian Cox’s space documentary on TV at Darcy’s prompting a month and a half ago, back before they knew each other properly and he always felt vaguely mulish about doing anything she recommended, and grudgingly grateful when he ended up liking it. He knew that in the modern sense a 'wormhole' meant some kind of vortex. Steve had to keep reminding himself that tapeworms and parasites weren’t really an issue for people anymore. Before he went in the ice, Sam’s suggestion could have been a serious one.

‘So how’d you meet her?’ Sam says. Steve jumps. As is so often the case, he gets lost in his internal translation and forgets that there’s a real life conversation going on outside. Luckily, Sam never seems to mind the way that he falls out of step. It’s one of the reasons Steve likes talking to him so much.

Steve considers whether to be honest or not. Whether to tell the whole truth or just a part of it. ‘We... we’ve known each other through work for a while,’ he says eventually. ‘Agent and lab assistant to this astrophysicist who knows too much not to be on the payroll. About to move into P.R., or maybe H.R., she tells me. Just as soon as she finds someone who she deems worthy to take care of her genius.’

Sam nods. He steals Steve a little glance, as if deliberating about whether to press for more details. But after a moment he seems to think better of it. ‘Well, I hope I’ll get to meet the lady one day. If she’s with SHIELD, she should be able to do a couple laps with us one morning.’

‘I’ll suggest it to her,’ Steve says. He wonders whether he will or not. He can’t imagine introducing them without coming out to Sam somehow; he already feels like his failure to mention the support group is a lie by omission. And maybe it’s too soon to start introducing her to his friends; the last thing he wants is to scare her away. Then again, she _did_ let him stay over...

...He speeds up, laps Sam again, and for now, the subject is dropped.

***

‘And then you built a _pillow fort_?’ Jane repeats. She sounds a bit thunderstruck. ‘And then you _read each other poetry_?’

‘Yep!’ Darcy sighs, leaning back in her chair and spinning around dreamily. ‘It was beyond awesome.’

‘Wow,’ Jane says at last, dazedly.

‘I know, right?’

‘ _Wow._ ’

‘ _I know, right?’_

‘I understand now why you think that sexual relationships can be boring,’ Jane comments, after a few moments. ‘Bar Thor, I can’t think of any relationship I’ve been in where we did that many different things in one evening.’

Darcy decides not to ask Jane to expand on that.

‘Did he stay over, then?’ Jane asks, leaning forward. Then she looks a bit tentative. ‘Um, I mean, obviously not, um, I don’t know if – ’

When she’s in a good mood, like today, Darcy finds Jane’s floundering kind of adorable. ‘Yeah, he stayed over; I felt bad about turning him out at like one am. I put him on the couch and then we made breakfast in the morning.’ She leaves out her lame nightmare incident. She’d rather only have one of the preternaturally talented people in her life know about that, and one is enough.

‘What did you make?’

‘Pancakes, bacon, all that jazz,’ Darcy says casually, and Jane mouths another _wow_. Now she thinks about it, it was really a pretty good eighteen-hour date. A bit like a slumber party, but with marginally more snuggling and intense eye contact.

‘Darce, you know I don’t say this often,’ Jane starts, slowly, ‘but I think that you may really be onto something with this guy.’ She smiles in a maternal sort of way, and this is one of the things that Darcy could never figure out about Jane: her ability to be like a complete space-head most of the time but with these bouts of intense, dogged and highly hypocritical practicality, normally taking the form of Concern For Darcy. ‘He sounds like an excellent influence on you. And since you met him at your support group thing, I guess there’s no risk of an Ian Incident.’ Then a machine _dings_ in the background, and Jane turns away, her expression altering, suddenly back to Scienceland. ‘Wish you’d tell me his name, though,’ she says vaguely, hurrying over to the machine and tapping at a few keys. Her mind is already half-lost in complex equations.

‘Haha, well,’ Darcy says to her retreating back, ‘I wouldn’t wanna jinx it, you know?’

Besides, she suspects that Jane will find out soon enough, and she wants to hang onto her boss' approval for a little while longer.

***

‘Hey, Darcy,’ Steve says. He hopes that he doesn’t sound as nervous as he feels, standing in the door of her lab holding two Starbucks coffee cups.

Darcy looks up sharply at the sound of his voice. ‘Steve?’ she says, sounding more than a little shocked.

He’s never visited her at work before, and it took him a little while to work up the courage. They haven’t mentioned their relationship to anybody on the team yet – though he suspects that Darcy may have told Jane some details – and this definitely constitutes taking a step forward. Oh, god, he thought this would be a nice surprise, but maybe this was meant to be casual and he’s just going to make her uncomfortable and...

‘I remember you said you wanted to try one of the, uh, Mocha coconut thing-a-ma-jigs from Starbucks,’ he blurts, spinning a quick safety net of excuses. ‘And it was hot out and I was passing by, so...’

Darcy blinks a few times, then launches herself off the lab bench, grabs her drink off him and wraps him in a tight hug. ‘Steve, thank you so much! Nobody’s ever brought me soulless corporate coffee at work before.’

He takes a little step backwards for reasons that have nothing to do with the physical force of her – he could lift her up bodily with one hand – and everything to do with the very pleasant surprise that she seems happy to see him.

It’s a bit like Bucky, he thinks. He could never quite understand why Bucky smiled when he saw him, why Bucky put up with him and supported him when he was nothing but a dead weight. Although he understands that he must be bringing _something_ to Darcy’s life – companionship, aesthetics, a different perspective? – he still marvels at the fact that she seems to carry on wanting him around.

Bucky’s name kills the smile on his lips, though. He can’t help but blame himself, sometimes. Playing out every second of the last time he saw him before he went down. If he’d got there a second sooner, grabbed his hand...

He’s brought back down to earth by Darcy’s rubbing gentle circles onto his back. Normally she would clap him heartily on the shoulder, or mock-claw at him, complaining that he’s squishing her, but today her touch is soft and tentative. For all her brashness, she has an uncanny knack for telling when something is wrong. 

‘We should drink our soulless coffees before they melt,’ she says quietly, and he pulls back straight away, handing her her drink wordlessly. Darcy glances at him under her lashes, hesitating, and then shuffles forward and asks in an almost-casual voice:

‘Penny for your thoughts?’  After a second, she adds, ‘Jane’s off taking readings on the roof. She shouldn’t be back for a good twenty minutes.’

‘Nothing,’ Steve says, trying to keep his voice light. ‘Just... old stuff. Suddenly thought about it.’

Darcy leans forward, commiserating. His super sight picks out the slight clench and relax of her fingers around the cup before she speaks, and a flicker at her throat as she swallows. ‘Do you wanna talk about it?’ She matches his tone, but he can tell that she had worked up to that question. There are some things that still haven't come up between them; topics that neither he nor Darcy quite dare to broach. The Howling Commandoes, and Howard, dead and buried. His visits to Peggy in the nursing home. Bucky – his life, his fate, even his name – so often in his mind, but never quite making it out into the open between them. Quite a feat, Steve thinks, considering the extent to which their lives are intertwined.

Steve shakes his head, the instinctive soldier’s reaction – or maybe just forties reaction – that he still hasn’t trained himself out of. Then he softens the blow a little, because her face has fallen slightly and he knows that she wishes he would... _open up_. Like a wound, like re-breaking a bone that's healed crooked. Even the idea makes him wince. ‘I don’t know,’ he tells her, ‘I’d rather just... enjoy the day, you know? Talking about it isn’t gonna change anything.’

‘It might,’ she mumbles, and she gives the ghost of a sigh, but then she resolutely changes the subject. He knows enough of Darcy to appreciate the extreme effort this restraint must have cost her. ‘I know what you mean about enjoying the day, though,' she says, glancing out of the window. New York shimmers below them, a few half-hearted whisps of cloud streaking a remorselessly blue sky. 'Every morning I think that this weather can’t last and it’s gonna start chucking it down with rain any second. But no, it’s still as hot as fuck and I can make an excuse to eat all the ice cream I want.’

Steve still hasn’t got used to the way that she curses like a sailor, and it makes him laugh, startling him out of his funk. ‘I fought for an America where citizens were free to eat ice cream regardless of the weather,’ he says, putting on his most serious Captain voice, which makes Darcy giggle too.

Metaphorically, the clouds have passed; they’re back to normal. But Steve wonders how long it will last, how it will end. When he opens up to her – because he wants to, he really does –  will she understand? Will he feel worse than before? Will she wish that she hadn’t asked?

It isn’t just that he doesn’t want her to be burdened with problems all his own. He’s scared that when she sees the true extent of the damage, the baggage, she’ll throw up her hands and leave.

He tries to believe that won’t happen, but the idea scares him. And so, for now, he brushes her off, and hopes that one day he’ll be braver, and that she’ll be patient until then.

***

On and off since she left home, Darcy has grown plants. It’s a good way of making sure that she remembers to do all the other things that she should do – like sleep, and cook, and clean the apartment. She has little pots of herb plants, basil and rosemary and sage, and then a begonia, too, just because she loves the deep crimson colour.

They keep her grounded. Looking at the riot of fragile green leaves and small flowers on her windowsill calms her, reminds her of what she has to do next, prompts her to cook with the fresh herbs rather than order takeout every night. When Ian came back to hers for the first time, he expressed surprise: ‘I didn’t think you were so hot on the domestic stuff’. Sometimes Darcy can hardly believe herself that the plants have survived this long.  

A week or so later, she invites Steve over again. He mentions that he keeps meaning to watch some Monty Python and that he’s never tried Ramen. They go to an overpriced noodle bar a few blocks away from Time Square, and then head back to hers.

She’s just coming back from the kitchen with a full bowl of sugary popcorn when she sees that he’s drawing a sprig of mint. He’s got the pot down from the shelf and is already delicately laying down the texture of the leaves on his sketchpad.

‘Sorry, I wanted to make the popcorn the old-fashioned way and it required supervision.’ She's never really worried about leaving a guest unentertained before. Maybe Jane is right: Steve's a good influence on her, at least where manners are concerned.

Steve shakes his head. ‘Don’t worry, your plants kept me entertained. They’re in really good condition, I was admiring them last time.’

Darcy giggles. ‘That sounds weird. But thank you.’ She plops down on the sofa next to him and offers him the bowl. ‘Popcorn?’

About halfway through 'Monty Python and the Holy Grail', Steve ends up spilling half the popcorn because he’s laughing so hard. Darcy loves the way that sometimes he’s a total dork.

It’s really late, early, really, when either of them even start thinking about Steve going home. But it only takes a few moments for Steve to give up his weak protests about imposing. Darcy half-jokingly tells him that he should start packing for a slumber party when he comes around hers.

It’s only later, when they’re lying in bed together, and Darcy is half-asleep, snuggled into his arms, that the vague thought comes to her. Their relationship, this precious growing thing... It’s become another grounding influence - like a fragile seedling pushing through dark earth. Something to nurture, and cherish, and give structure to the spaces in her life. The idea makes her smile in the darkness. Maybe she’ll try and explain it to Steve in the morning.

***

‘Fury wanted you,’ Clint says casually, as he and Tony stroll into the main kitchen area. ‘Said he tried to get a hold of you last night, but you weren’t answering the phone.’

Steve looks up at the ceiling and tries not to sigh too loudly. Every time he thinks that eating breakfast in the communal area rather than his own floor is a good idea, he is reminded of why exactly it _isn’t_. And then he retreats, feels antisocial, and the cycle begins again.

‘Yeah, I had it switched off,’ Steve says, taking a large gulp of coffee and adding, ‘still not quite sure how to work the damn thing. I’ll go see him this morning.’

‘Bet he got pissy ‘bout that, huh?’ Tony says, his eyes sparkling wickedly. Or maybe he’s just sleep deprived. Steve’s never quite sure. ‘Jeez, sometimes I wonder why they bothered defrosting you. The way you’re on call the whole time, it’d be easier just keep you chilled between missions.’

Steve rolls his eyes, but to an extent he feels like Tony has a point. ‘Well, I was officially clocked out. It’s not like he’s gonna fire me.’ He sends up a quick prayer to Heaven that neither of them will think of asking _why_ he wasn’t answering the phone. He and Darcy haven’t even discussed the idea of going public. Hell, he doesn’t even know if they’re _dating_ ; although the idea thrills him, interpersonal relationships seem more complicated than they used to be and he’s scared of putting a foot wrong, especially in their kind of relationship.

Of course, Steve thinks, the fact that he lives with several master spies, as well as the guy with access to all the security cameras in the building, means that the team is probably aware of the fact that he’s hanging out with Darcy a lot, but they’re just waiting for him to tell them himself.

He’s not sure whether that thought is touching or a little daunting.

When he ends up going to see Fury, the director informs him that his presence will be required at several meetings, as a representative for the Avengers Initiative. A few routine missions and patrols are planned out. There's something else, too: some new, ultra-secret weapons programme that Fury would like him to see. Steve nods along, mentally rearranging his schedule to fit with his duties. This is a routine that they’ve settled into. Steve’s position is so singular that it’s easier just to talk through things as they come. He doesn’t know what he’ll be doing from one week to the next, but for a Super Soldier back from the dead, he’s learnt if nothing else to expect the unexpected.

‘...And on Saturday morning you’ll be heading up a lieutenant training session,’ Fury continues, glancing down at his computer. ‘Regular stuff, short-term strategic planning and team dynamics... is there a problem, Rogers?’ His dark, piercing eye zeroes in on Steve’s face. Steve is frowning because – dammit – he promised Darcy that he’d go with her to the Aces meeting. He’d wanted to take her on to Coney Island after, make a day out of it.

Dammit if he isn’t at least going to ask.   

Steve takes a deep breath and then says, ‘is there any way that we could reschedule that, sir? I might be... I’m otherwise engaged Saturday.’

Fury looks at him very hard for what feels like an age. And then, leaning back in his chair, he says slowly, ‘not a problem, Rogers. Got a time that’d be better?’

And just like that, it’s fine. Steve guesses that Fury lets him win the small battles – knows that it’s standard leadership tactic that he’s used himself – but at the same time, there seems to be a certain warmth in Fury’s expression that wasn’t there before. Nothing that he could put a finger on; more like a sense that Fury isn’t angry about this particular course of action.

Again, that sensation of being bolstered and daunted at the same time.

It almost feels like everyone is rooting for him.

***

When Steve and Darcy arrive at the meeting place together, trading slurps of a mocha cookie crumble Frappé, the overwhelming reaction is delight.

‘Are you two...’ Alex lets the sentence trail off, her tone politely curious but her face alight with glee.

Darcy looks up at Steve. He looks down at her, his expression hopeful and more than a little anxious. They haven’t really discussed this – she realises now that they’ve been skating over the topic – and so she just bumps her arm against his and smiles at him. ‘Your call’, she wants to say. And so, after a moment, Steve nods, putting a big hand on the small of her back - she suspects it's as much for his support as hers. ‘More or less,’ he says, in his deep tenor voice, with just a tiny bit of bravado. 

‘I guess,’ Darcy adds. She is trying her hardest not to actually split her face in half by smiling too much.

There are at least five separate squeals. Yamato grumbles at her - 'leave some cute guys for the rest of us, Darce' - but he’s smiling behind it. Pete reaches forward and fist-bumps Steve, and Steve returns the gesture with something between bemusement and delight.

‘Come and sit down under the tree, you two,’ Lynn says briskly, but she looks extremely smug. ‘We’re outside again today. Haven’t seen an August like this in years.’

‘And I hope never to see it again,’ Darcy groans, flopping down in the shadiest part of the circle and dragging Steve with her.

‘Well, you’ll be happy, then,’ Mei replies, shuffling over to make space. She passes them both cupcakes and continues, ‘weather forecast says they’re predicting a big summer storm within a couple weeks.’

‘But they’re saying it’ll be getting more humid before then,’ Alex grumbles. ‘Just what we needed, huh.’

Steve sighs. ‘Whatever else you say about New York, you can’t claim the climate’s boring.’

‘I dunno,’ Darcy says, nabbing the frappé from him and taking a long sip. ‘Sometimes I think I preferred the weather in London. All you need are jeans, jumpers and umbrellas...’

It seems to Darcy that people are particularly keen to offer her and Steve cake, and her paper cup of lemonade is always full. It means a lot to her that the rest of the group is happy for them – that they’re always happy for new couples, new friends – and she knows exactly why: so many people beyond this little circle believe that Aces are broken, that they’re damaged, that they’re incapable of forming meaningful relationships at all.

And so every time that one of them turns up happy and fulfilled, it’s one in the eye for all those people whose incomprehension turned them towards dismissal or derision.

Darcy fiddles with the black ring on her finger and listens to what Lynn is saying about finding the right time to come out of the fridge. She feels the comforting weight of Steve’s arm against hers as they lean into one another, and she loves the fact that here, at least, nobody is judging them. They’re all here for kinship, for vindication and ultimately for happiness. They don’t have to hide.

She glances up at the sky. It’s somehow both cloudless and lowering through the trees. All this talk of fridges makes her feel hotter than ever: she lays a palm to her forehead and feels a faint sheen of sweat.

Darcy glances up at Steve, and he smiles, passing her a can of cool lemonade. She cracks it open and swigs it, and as she does so she wishes that this damn storm would come already. This heat wave has been going on for far too long, and she’s ready for it to be over.

***

Two weeks later, after the downfall of SHIELD and the near-collapse of the free world, Steve wakes up to see rivulets of water cascading down the window panes of his hospital room. The sight almost makes him choke, and forces him to recall something which might otherwise have been forgotten.

He has a vaguest memory of being dragged up into the air, dragged out of the river... And fast, heavy raindrops  _tap-tap-tapping_ on a metal hand.


	5. This is Not the Time for Goodbyes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the universe effectively says: 'fuck. Now what?'

"I am beginning to rub my eyes at the prospect of peace. I think it will require more courage than anything that has gone before … One will have to look at long vistas again, instead of short ones, and one will at last fully recognise that the dead are not only dead for the duration of the war.”

**Lady Cynthia Asquith: Diaries 1915-1918**

 

***

"Of many reasons I love you here is one

 

the way you write me from the gate at the airport

so I can tell you everything will be alright

 

so you can tell me there is a bird

trapped in the terminal      all the people

ignoring it       because they do not know

what to do with it       except to leave it alone

until it scares itself to death

 

it makes you terribly terribly sad

 

You wish you could take the bird outside

and set it free or       (failing that)

call a bird-understander

to come help the bird

 

All you can do is notice the bird

and feel for the bird       and write

to tell me how language feels

impossibly useless

 

but you are wrong

 

You are a bird-understander

better than I could ever be

who make so many noises

and call them song

 

These are your own words

your way of noticing

and saying plainly

of not turning away

from hurt

 

you have offered them

to me       I am only

giving them back

 

if only I could show you

how very useless

they are not"

 

**Craig Arnold: “Bird-Understander”**

 

***

Darcy has had her life turned upside down too many times now. She no longer believes in the inherently flawed notion of fate, and she can’t entertain the grandiose supposition that she is the centre of the universe (although sometimes she feels like she might be close to it). When she was a teenager, collecting achievements and experiences with a magpie-like enthusiasm, she had clung to the idea that she might be cosmically important. That was before a collection of geniuses, Norse gods and superheroes had bowled into her life and blown her out of the water. Luckily, there’s nothing to get you through a quarter-life crisis like fighting repeatedly for your life. She made her peace with the fact that she was not important; not in any cosmic sense of the word. She simply happened to be in the right place at the right time.

 

And yet.

 

She clung to the notion that, in a small way, she might have been important to those genuine game-changers… Especially Steve. That she might have done him some good by stumbling through his life. That the things she had told him, the ways she had opened his mind - they would stay with him. Change the way he saw the world he was saving. When she thinks like that, it’s easier to act like a hero.

 

She’s spent the last three days in full Agent Lewis mode. SHIELD HQ became the seventh circle of hell, she had no idea whose side she was on, and she was pretty damn sure that she was about to die any second for good eighteen-hour period. Eventually, when she’d tentatively established her allies, they'd told her that nobody had seen or heard from Steve and they had to presume that he was - well, call her naive, but she hadn’t believed it for a second. When he once again defied all the odds and washed up alive, she hardly batted an eyelid.

 

Now she’s made it through - or maybe she’s just in the eye of the storm. And while every moment of it has been harder than anything she’d ever bargained for, she’s also never been part of something that felt so important. Fighting for her neck, for the ideals she believed in, stubbornly believing that Steve would show up - it all felt like the right thing to do with her life. Even if it meant cutting that life short by several decades.

 

She tries to cling to that clarity now. Like Cinderella after the ball, she’s just Darcy again, sitting in a hospital corridor waiting for her - boyfriend? snuggle-buddy? comrade in arms? significant other? - waiting for  _ him  _ to wake up. Dark teal carpet tiles keep blurring in front of her eyes, and she tucks her feet up onto the fuzzy maroon chair, literally trying to pull herself together. She's hugging her knees as she tries to gulp back the tears again, because while Agent Lewis could calmly believe in Steve, civilian Darcy is terrified for him.

 

_ God _ , is she glad that now the worst of the shitstorm is over, she can just sit here and not even pretend to be okay. Let the worry swallow her and just think about Steve, and how she wants him to be here, like a physical ache. Like overstrained muscles screaming for oxygen and rest. 

 

 _Pleasepleasepleasepleaseplease._ Wake up.

 

There's a lab-coated someone in front of her, and they're passing her a cup of faintly awful coffee. But it's milky and sugary and highly caffeinated, and so she gulps it down gratefully.

Looking up, she realises who this someone is; she hacked Steve's medical feed hours ago, when the torture of not knowing finally trumped her moral scruples. It's the Stark medical practitioner who's had the thankless task of trying to keep Captain America alive for the last twenty-seven hours or so. Dr Aziz is middle-aged, formidable and distinguished-looking, and if Darcy wasn't so far beyond caring she would feel like sitting up a little straighter to be worthy of this woman's attention.

 

As it is, though, she just takes another gulp of coffee and meets the doctor’s eyes pleadingly. Her laptop battery ran dry three hours ago, and since then she's been stranded in ignorance. Steve's life has been left hanging like the sword of Damocles over her head, fragile and fatal.

 

'Ms Lewis, his condition is stable,' Aziz says, without preamble. 'We expect him to regain consciousness within a few hours.'

 

It feels like stepping into a warm house out of a blizzard, like seeing the light at the end of a dark, creepy tunnel, like Natasha stabbing the goon who's got you in a chokehold or Steve's shield hitting the gunman who's got you in point-blank range.

 

'Thank you,' Darcy manages to gasp. 'Thank you…'

 

Dr Aziz smiles, a little tired, a little sympathetic, and tells Darcy that Ms Potts will be out here to see her soon.

 

Darcy slumps back into her chair, boneless with relief, seeping through her like a drug. She begins to smile, a few tears escaping from her eyes and dribbling down her cheeks. She sucks in oxygen, and just lets herself  _ feel _ again. No longer afraid.  _ He's gonna be okay.  _

 

God, over the past few hours, she’s almost wished that the poisonous stories were true - the bigoted mutterings, sidelong glances and vitriolic comments. If he died, it would be like dying right along with him, and she was scared of that. She’s almost wished that not sleeping with someone meant that your feelings for them were more blunted, less visceral. That it was easier to let go. She’s almost wished she  _ was _ broken, wished she didn't have to feel a thing. Wished that she could detach herself from Steve, like cutting the strings on balloons - snip-snip-snip - and float on, too light, too cold to be touched by any of it.  _ Almost. _

 

But she's here and hurting, for better or worse, and, despite everything, she is glad for it.

 

Tentatively, she begins to uncurl herself from within. To try a bit of a smile as Dr Aziz walks away. To blow her nose and straighten her glasses.

 

She sees Pepper Potts approaching along the corridor, and gets to her feet, trying to muster up a warm, civil greeting.

 

‘We’ll move to a private waiting room,’ Pepper says, gently and without preamble, ‘and then I think you’d better sit down again. I’ve got to tell you some things that aren’t pretty.’

***

When he’d first awoken, abrupt and disoriented it had only been for a few seconds. Long enough to see the change in the weather, long enough to think -  _ rain on metal that hand was his pulling me up the bank with you ‘til the end of the line  _ \- but then waves of fatigue had lapped at his mind again. Pulled it under, into healing. 

 

When Steve comes back into consciousness again, it happens more slowly, his thoughts layering up like building blocks. Little sparks of fact, slowly providing a foundation to stand on.

 

_Bucky's back. Gone bad. Winter Soldier. SHIELD's compromised. Fell into the river. Somehow didn’t drown. Him?_

 

Then, as his eyelids twitch and he starts to feel the tingling of a dozen healing wounds, questions begin to hammer against the inside of his skull.

 

_Did someone save me? Our side or theirs? Why? Was it Bucky who saved me? Did we take out that ship? Did Tasha's plan work?_

 

And the question he's been trying to keep crammed into the back of his mind through all of this, as the world goes to hell, telling himself she'll be fine, she's a tough one, other people will look after her -

 

_Is Darcy ok?_

 

Before he opens his eyes, even, this is the question that he croaks out into the world, into the steady beeping of monitors and the soft, clinical pillows. It's fine. He recognises the room as a Stark Tower ward: the decor and the views are right, and he's ended up here plenty of times before. He's not dead.

 

'Agent Lewis. She make it?'

 

The nurse turns around with a start. 'Captain Rogers.' He strides towards the bed. 'Could

you repeat that, please?'

 

'Agent Lewis,' Steve repeats. 'What's her status?' He looks around him. 'Also, what's the status of, uh… the world?'

 

The nurse has already turned away, tapping on a StarkPad whilst speaking aloud into a headset. 'Repeat, Captain Rogers has regained consciousness,' he says, then turns around, slightly distracted. 'The world? Well, still around, but gone completely to shit. As for Agent Lewis...' He tilts his head to one side, taps on the tablet a few more times. He frowns, and Steve's stomach contracts painfully. His heartbeat kicks up, and the monitor's beeping changes from its soothing rhythm to a more frenetic pace.

 

'Alive and well, Captain - and, it would appear, according to our security feeds, responsible for hacking your medical records approximately eighteen hours ago.' He scrolls down, and Steve leans back against the pillows, weak with relief. 'Only detected two hours ago, JARVIS overrode normal threat procedures once she'd been identified by the systems.' He sighed. 'Crikey, the drama never stops, does it?'

 

Steve makes a small noise of agreement, closing his eyes again. He tries not to let himself think about Bucky, about the Winter Soldier. He tries not to think about the end of SHIELD, or wonder how many of the agent's he's worked beside were secretly traitors all along. Instead he focuses on the positives. He's alive. Sam and Tash are alive. Fury - just about. HYDRA lost. He has good reason to think Bucky is still in there, somewhere. And Darcy... Darcy made it too.

 

For now, that's enough.

***

After she’s finished debriefing Darcy, Pepper gives her access to one of Stark tower’s capacious bedrooms. She seems to be hoping that Darcy will ask her questions, say something beyond the most bare-boned practical questions, but Darcy feels as though there's a tight cork in her throat. If she asks even one question, for one clarification, she'll burst at the seams, and she doesn't want Pepper to see that. When Pepper shuts the door with a gentle 'goodnight', there's an expression of concern on her face. Darcy wishes that she could tell Pepper that she's ok, but what would be the point when it's obviously a lie? She's never felt much more pitiable in her life; all she wants to do is hide away.

Although the swandown pillows and Egyptian cotton pillows soothe her body, her mind just won’t seem to shut up. She keeps coming back to Pepper’s description of Steve’s battle with the one they called the Winter Soldier - to bring definition and truth to what had only been fearful rumours until now - and as she thinks over the facts again, Darcy feels dread gathering in her chest. Cold and heavy and final, like an iron fist on her heart.

If there’s one thing that could bring about Steve’s death, it’s the poetry of his life.

And nothing is more poetic than a love out of time.

Darcy’s always been good with probability. Statistics, hacking, that’s her jam, and she seldom misreads a situation or a line of code. And now she’s looking at the figures, sussing it out in her head, and what she sees makes her feel sick.

There’s no way that Steve is going to let Bucky go. She knows the facts, she’s seen the exhibit at the Smithsonian. Then there’s the scraps he’s thrown her, and the way that his face shuts down when his memory goes too deep. Darcy thinks she’s got a pretty good idea of what they had - “platonic”, a romance in everything but name - and she knows that no matter what his oldest friend has become, Steve will find him, get through to him, or die trying.

He’s damn near died once already; she’s seen the footage, and knows the Winter Soldier is Captain America’s equal in close combat. Unless Bucky’s HYDRA programming is disintegrating, Steve’s search will mean another dose of heartache, another pitched battle in which Steve can never fight at his best. Darcy doesn’t know how she would cope with that.

But maybe Steve’s welfare will be none of her concern by that point.

She often felt like what she and Steve had was too light, too easy to be permanent. Now, thinking it through, thinking about Steve’s future, she begins to form a theory. She realises where she might fit in the grand scheme of things, the great narrative that seems to make up Steve’s life - his just, historical life, so different from the amoral, chaotic banality of most humans’ existence. Perhaps she is simply a prelude, a paver of the way. James Buchanan Barnes was the one who was always going to take her place by Steve’s side - because, really, how could she ever hope to compete? She’s just the one who made him realise there’s a place to take.

As this thought takes shape in the fog of her exhausted brain, Darcy finally starts to cry. Big, melodramatic, self-pitying sobs; ugly and wet and so cathartic. She curls herself up, buries her head in the pillow and cries and cries and cries. Because she loves Steve - no point trying to hide that from herself anymore - and because she knows that even if he’s probably handing himself a death sentence, she would never stand in his way. 

Eventually, the sobs subside, and for a while she sleeps like the dead.

***

 

 

Steve has had enough. He wants to see Darcy, tell her himself everything that’s happened, seek her reassurance and advice. He wants to know what she’s been through, too; he’d understand if, after this attack, she wants nothing more to do with anything to do with this world. He suspects that the bonds that tie her to it aren’t quite so thick as the ones that bind him, and sometimes that scares him, sometimes it makes him envious. She could still just walk away, back to normality, and carry on a normal life. That will never be an option for him.

 

Just then, there’s a knock on the door, and his heart leaps. ‘Yes?’

 

‘Just me, I’m afraid. I hear you’re conscious enough to read?’ It’s Natasha’s voice, and Steve subsides back, disappointed and slightly irritated.

 

‘Come in,’ he sighs. As she stalks into the room carrying a dossier the size of her torso, he lifts a hand to his temples. ‘So how come you’re allowed into the room when Darcy isn’t, then?’

 

‘Because I’m more brazen about sneaking past your armed guards,’ Natasha said, shrugging. ‘They should give you the all-clear for visitors by tomorrow morning, and you’ll see her then. I just thought there’s a few things I’d better brief you on before you start making plans.’

 

Steve gives a huff of impatience. ‘Could you not have sneaked her in with you?’

 

‘I was gonna, but Pepper spirited her away to Stark Tower before I could get to her. She’s probably having her own briefing right now, and then I think she’ll want to sleep.’ A ripple of something unnameable flashes across Natasha’s face. ‘She hasn’t slept two hours together all the time you were out, you know.’

 

Steve feels his gut twist. ‘Natasha…’

 

‘Here.’ She dumps the dossier on his nightstand. ‘You’ll want to have a look through this. There’s probably a lot of stuff that’s going to get ugly, now that SHIELD’s files have been compromised. I’ve tried to organise it in a vague order of importance, although it’s all pretty fucking urgent. We need to stabilise the situation as quickly as we can if we’re heading after the Winter Soldier - ’

 

Steve tried not to let his surprise show on his face. ‘Who said anything about heading after the Winter Soldier?’

 

Natasha gave him a Look, and Steve decides very quickly that he’ll be fighting a losing battle if he tries to deny it any further. ‘Don’t try to tell me that you weren’t planning it from the moment you regained coherent thought. I warn you, though,’ she continues in a gentler tone, ‘some of the stuff in that dossier isn’t pretty, and I’m being realistic when I say you might have let yourself in for a impossible mission. If you didn’t want to take down HYDRA before, you’ll want to by the time you find out how they - ah,  _ craft -  _ their assassins.’

 

Steve leans back on his pillows and massages his temples. ‘I want to start out as soon as possible. As soon as the SHIELD situation is under control.’ He takes a deep breath. ‘I was his commanding officer, I was there when we lost him. If there’s any of James Buchanan Barnes still in him, it’s my duty to rehabilitate him.’  _ I’ll follow him to the end of the line. _

 

Natasha stays silent for a moment. Then she says quietly, ‘Standard SHIELD retrieval squad size is four. Think about the agents you’d be interested in taking with you.’

 

Steve bites his lip. At her words - at her actually voicing it, the possibility, the risks - there’s a little, pigheaded part of him, the sort that would curl around a grenade that he half-knew was bound to be dead, or carry on taunting when he was already blacking out from the bully’s punches, and it says, ‘I should go alone. It would be safer for…for everyone.’

 

Natasha’s jaw tightens, and suddenly it’s hard to meet her eyes. ‘I think that we both know that’s not true, Rogers. All of us can look after ourselves.’

 

***

 

When Darcy wakes up, it’s morning. She feels like a machine that’s had a factory reset. Just about wiped clean, but oddly empty, too. A part of her is irritated at Pepper and JARVIS for letting her sleep for so long, but she grudgingly admits to herself that she definitely needed it.

 

She gets up and pads across the room, realising that she’s still wearing the same outfit that she was in when they told her that Steve was in intensive care in the tower. She knows that she must stink, so she takes the liberty of having a power shower and wrapping herself in a fluffy crimson towel (which feels uncomfortably like being wrapped in Essence of Tony - what kind of egomaniac has guest towels the colour of their work suit?) before clambering back into her grimy clothes.

 

She raises her eyes to the ceiling. ‘JARVIS. Can you get me a portable cup of coffee within thirty seconds?’

 

‘One will slide out of the alcove on your left within about fifteen seconds, Agent Lewis.’

 

‘Thanks, man.’ She grabs the styrofoam cup and blows gently, rippling the smooth, dark surface of the coffee, then takes a sip. Black with two sugars, just how she liked it. She is always faintly awed by the quality of the coffee in Stark Tower. Obsidian and rich and just sharp enough to make your eyes open a little wider with each swig. Thus fortified, she begins to walk towards the door. ‘Is it alright for me to pay Steve a visit this morning?’ she asks, trying to keep her voice calm and steady.

 

‘I believe it would be his pleasure.’ JARVIS’ voice is as cool and cordial as ever. Darcy wonders whether he’s been programmed with enough social intelligence to understand that Darcy is walking to this room as though to the gallows. It’s hard not to drag her footsteps as they proceed along the shiny wood-floored corridor, into the great elevator and out into a more clinical area of the building. Then JARVIS bids her halt in front of a thick metal door, and her starts pounding. Gone is the sense of release from the night before. She wants to bolt like a rabbit.

 

Her nerves aren’t helped by the two hulking guards who flank the doors, their attire something between that of scrub nurses and front-line fighters.

 

‘Agent Darcy Lewis here to see Captain Rogers,’ JARVIS intones. Darcy is expecting some kind of protest, but the guards simply nod and press a button on the door panel.

 

Over the Stark intercom system, Steve’s voice is almost as clear as if he’d been standing next to her the whole time. Her heartbeat kicks up another notch. ‘Darcy? Why are you even asking me, JARVIS? Let her in here!’

 

‘Apologies, Sir,’ JARVIS says smoothly, and the doors slide open. And suddenly, despite her dread, Darcy finds herself sprinting over the threshold.

 

‘Steve!’ she calls, and shit, shit, her voice is all bunged up and choky and this is the  _ last  _ thing he needs, surely? But then she hears him reply, ‘Darcy!’ and all she can think about is how rough he sounds himself and how  _ good  _ it is to hear his voice again. She pushes her glasses up and focusses on him properly, and what she sees makes her stomach give a painful wrench. 

 

There’s a difference between seeing someone’s injuries on a screen and seeing the evidence of them right in front of you, 3-D and tactile and breathing. It’s never been so easy to believe that Steve before and after the serum are, in fact, the same person. He looks gaunt and exhausted, there are still scars and bruises fading on his face and arms, and his posture is a little slumped, a little curled in on itself. Not bad for someone who should by all rights be dead, but still not at that fucking great.

 

It’s this, more than her own emotional pain threshold, that makes her pull up short before she can throw herself on him. Instead, she drags a chair over to the bed, and as she reaches out a hand, she finds herself hesitating an inch away from his skin. She makes herself meet his eyes, trying to figure out what he wants from her, how much contact he can stand. Wondering what she herself expects from him.

 

He solves the dilemma by reaching up and taking her hand firmly in his own. ‘Darcy, you can touch me. It’s ok, I just got beat up a little.’ He gives her hand a reassuring squeeze, and she knows that he can feel the tension radiating off her. What puzzles her is that he doesn’t feel the same way. Is he really so chill about breaking it off with her to hare after his super soldier ex-boyfriend that he feels no awkwardness or guilt at all?

 

She swallows and forces herself to speak. ‘Seems like it was a little more than that. Word on the street is that they had to patch you together Frankenstein-style.’

 

Steve gives a raspy chuckle. ‘You can’t believe everything you hear in these corridors. Stark’s employees are as gossipy as he is.’

 

Darcy makes herself smile and tries not to hold his hand too hard. He doesn’t need that, he doesn’t need that. ’Glad to hear it. Still, I hope that you’ll carry on taking it easy for a bit. Wouldn’t want to ruin all that nice stitch-work.’

 

Steve looks down, and Darcy’s momentarily distracted by the way his eyelashes brush against the bruise-like circles under his eyes. She wants to reach for him, so badly, but she makes herself resist. ‘Tell me something I don’t know. The doctors won’t let me out and about for another twenty-four hours. And I thought that HYDRA was meant to be authoritarian.’

 

Darcy swallows. She can’t think of anything else to say. She visualises the elephant in the room - it has a bionic trunk, black eyeliner, slightly manic hair and a red star on its forehead. It makes her want to laugh hysterically.

 

‘Steve,’ she says, forcing the words out of her throat. Fuck, she sounds unbearably awkward, she was always so shit at this kind of thing. ‘I know that you’ll want to go after him. And stuff. And - that’s ok. Great, even.’ Lies. ‘I’ll help you in any way you can.’

 

Steve’s eyes flicker up, and she’s surprised to see he looks a little puzzled. ‘Well, yeah. He was my… my best friend, Darcy.’ He meets her eyes again, and again she’s struck by how blue his irises are, how beautifully they shine, even when they’re tired and sunken. ‘Does this mean that… Well, Natasha was talking about the mission and she said - g’

 

It’s as though someone’s giving her an emotional Chinese burn. ‘Natasha was in here already?’

 

‘She tried to find you when she sneaked past the guards - you’re my first official visitor,’ Steve reassures her. Darcy feels about one percent better for two seconds. ‘But anyway, Natasha said a team of four would be best. I’ve been thinking it over - I’ll need a good agent, someone with experience with the weird stuff, someone who can go undercover. We’ll need a hacker, too, and someone to parse through tough intelligence.’ Darcy isn’t quite sure she can believe what she’s hearing. ‘So. I was wondering… wondering whether you wanted to come.’ He says it in a rush, as though it’s something that’s been torn out of him. As though he really cares what she has to say in return.

 

It’s all to much. Darcy’s eyes well with hot tears ( _ stupid, stupid)  _ and they dribble out onto her cheeks faster than she can furiously scrub them away. Steve looks stricken, and pushes himself forward to encircle her in his arms. 

 

‘I’m sorry, Darcy, I’m sorry,’ he says, and why does he sound so  _ confused,  _ is he so altruistic himself that he thought she could really be happy for him? ‘Please don’t cry. Of course you don’t have to come if you don’t want to.’ He rubs her back in small circles and stays silent for a few moments. Darcy tries to get her breath back, to articulate why this is not okay, but she’s breathing like a wounded animal. So she stays quiet, waiting for the final blow to fall.

 

When he speaks again, though, his voice is laced with pain - and the words that he says freeze her thought processes in their tracks. ‘I’ll understand if… if you want a break from all this, though. And - from us.’

 

Darcy looks up at him, blinking away her tears. She can feel that her mouth is hanging open in shock. ‘Wha… What? Hang on.’ She straightens up. ‘Why would you think I want that?’ and then, because she’s raw and emotional and she’s never had the best brain-to-mouth filter anyway, she blurts out, ‘I thought that  _ I  _ was the one getting my ass dumped here.’

 

Steve jerks backwards, already shaking his head, his eyes widening and his brow furrowing, and little embers of crazy-but-maybe-not-so-crazy hope start to flicker and spark in Darcy’s stomach. ‘Darcy. Why the heck would I be breaking up with you?’

 

‘Um, because you’ve just rediscovered your super war hero childhood friend slash soulmate from the forties isn’t in fact dead but just a little brainwashed?’ when she puts it like that, it’s hard not to wonder why the fuck he hasn’t told her to get lost yet.

 

Comprehension dawns across Steve’s face, and Darcy closes her eyes, almost expecting him to say, “oh yeah, you’re right, let’s break it off”. But then she feels him take her hands in both of his, and he’s leaning in until his forehead touches hers. She exhales, a little shaky, and he starts to speak softly, almost like he’s talking to himself.

 

‘Darcy. You’ve gotta understand, what Bucky and I had… Well… I know that he wasn’t like us. He’d bring home a different dame every week, for crying out loud. And although none of ‘em lasted long, I think he did love at least some. I don’t know.’ Steve breathed out heavily, fluttering both their hair. ‘Sure, what we had was special, but we were best friends. We never pushed it into anything more than that, either of us.’ He gave a slight chuckle. ‘If we slept together it was ‘cause we only had one bed to our name or because New York was damn near deadly for an asthmatic in the winter back then.’

 

Darcy clenched and unclenched her fists. ‘It was a different time. If you got to know each other now, you might be able to - ’

 

‘I don’t know whether Bucky would want that. I don’t know whether  _ I  _ would want that, although I’ve thought about it. I’m not gonna lie to you. I would have been happy spending my life with him if nothing else had changed. But now…’ Steve hesitates, and Darcy can tell this is painful for him, feels a stab of guilt for making  _ him  _ reassure  _ her  _ at a time like this. Although when Captain America is your significant other, who can blame a girl for being insecure?

 

After a moment, he continues. ‘Now, he’s buried god knows how deep and I don’t know whether he’s capable of coming back. If he does, I don’t want him to have to lean on me like a crutch for the rest of his life, just because I’m the one who could remind him.’ Steve blinks a few times, and then, eyes glittering a little too much, he smiles at her. ‘Besides. Now I have you, right?’

 

Sweet. Slightly anxious.  _ Loving. _

 

Darcy is incapable of not smiling back.

 

‘You sure do, Cap,’ she whispers, and then she leans forward to press a soft kiss to his lips.

 

She thinks that both of them cry a little, hiccupy sobs between gentle trading movements of their lips. She clambers into his lap as gently as she can, letting him guide her into a position where his injuries aren’t bearing any of her weight. They simply hold each other, breathing one another in and running fingertips across skin, reassuring themselves that this is real. They’ve both made it through, and they’re together on the other side.

 

After a little while, Darcy pulls away and says quietly, ‘I meant it, though, when I said I would help. If you want me on your squad, I’ll be there every step of the way. And when we get him back, if you decide that you want to…’

 

Steve lifts a hand to her face. ‘Darcy - ’

 

‘ _ If  _ \- well, I won’t stand in your way. Although I may stop hanging out with you until I’ve consumed several quarts of ice cream.’ 

 

Steve suddenly looks a little horrified. ‘When you started crying - did you think that I was gonna break up with you and then ask you to work for me to get him back?’

 

Darcy nods. ‘Yeah, pretty much.’

 

Steve bundles her closer to his chest and rocks her a little. ‘If you asked me to do that, I’d probably have spent the next ten hours at the gym mutilating punch bags.’

 

She punches his shoulder lightly. ‘Good to know that your altruism has some bounds, honey.’

 

The endearment slips out of her mouth before she can stop it, but luckily Steve looks more delighted than perturbed. ‘Darlin’, when it comes down to it, I’m only a man.’

 

‘Only, indeed,’ Darcy mumbles. For the first time since this shitstorm started, she’s starting to feel tentatively cheerful.

 

***

‘You never saw us, Lewis. Nobody visited this grave ‘cept you, to pay your respects. Maybe you felt a sense of blind justice, an intimidating military aura, permeate the air. But you’ve always been a bit of a weird one so nobody will care if you say that.’

 

‘Shut up, Clint. Yes, I solemnly swear not to tell anyone I met my old boss who just faked his own death to throw off several squillion evil and psychotic assassins. Happy?’

 

‘Very, Agent Lewis,’ Fury intones from underneath his hoodie.

 

Steve knows that this meeting can only last about another three minutes before all of them have to break for their respective safe houses, so he decides to move the conversation along. ‘Lewis will provide intelligence and technological support when Natasha is otherwise occupied, as well as backup in covert missions and combat situations. As she is well-known to Natasha and myself and has recently been getting along well with Sam, I would suggest that she is suitable - ’

 

‘Look, Rogers,’ Fury cuts him off, ‘nobody is really gonna argue with you about this. Sure, I could name a dozen agents more qualified for the job than Lewis, but before this fiasco I could have named three dozen. Now a dozen of them’ve turned out to be HYDRA moles and a dozen are dead. Everything about this situation defies protocol, so I’m gonna throw the ball into your court for this one, Rogers. I have to save my energy for other battles.’

 

Steve nods, uncertain whether he’s just been disowned or blessed. ‘Well. Thank you, Director. I guess.’

 

‘Not really a Director anymore, Rogers, since SHIELD doesn’t exist.’

 

I’d carry on answering to you, Steve wants to say, but he knows that Fury wouldn’t appreciate it and so he ends up just nodding. ‘Yes, sir.’

 

***

‘So you’re going off into the blue yonder and leaving me at Tony’s mercy?’ Jane says, her voice somewhere between anxious, whiny and just plain curious.

 

‘Yup. First stop Paris. Gotta get on the soldier’s trail before he has time to cover his tracks any more thoroughly.’ From what Natasha had found out, the Soldier’s cloaking was clumsy but effective, and he still had a lot of clout in some parts of the underworld. A monster as big as Hydra took a long time to stop twitching.

 

‘Are you sure you want to do this?’ Jane said. ‘You know it’ll be dangerous.’ Her voice rises a little, gains an edge. ‘I still can’t believe that you didn’t tell me that  _ Captain America  _ was your so-called perfect date.’

 

‘Look, I’m sorry I didn’t dish the goss on that one. But you’re dating Thor, so I don’t think that you can talk. And speaking of which - since when has anything I’ve done  _ not _ been dangerous? You were the one who pulled me into this crazy profession, Jane, so don’t go getting cold feet on me now.’

 

She can tell immediately that she’d hurt Jane’s feelings by the way that her normally open face pinches up like a flower at dusk.

 

‘I’m not blaming you for anything, Jane,’ she says, more gently. She comes forward with open arms, expecting a sulky rebuffal, but instead Jane reaches for her almost desperately, bony elbows everywhere. ‘In fact, I should be -  _ ow  _ \- thanking you. I always wanted to go backpacking across Europe with a hunky boyfriend.’

 

‘Promise me you’ll be careful,’ Jane says, and Darcy’s touched by how earnest she sounds.

 

‘Always am,’ she replies, patting her hair. ‘Well, except when I’m playing drunk poker with Thor and Clint. Then, a headstrong and reckless approach is all that will do.’

 

For such a tiny person, Jane can sure hug hard. ‘I’ll miss your social justice education sessions,’ she confesses, her tone a little tremulous. ‘And your filing system.’

 

Darcy claws back enough personal space to give her a little shove. ‘Jesus! You can keep up both those things by yourself. Get a Tumblr and some multi-coloured Post-It Notes and you’ll be laughing. My rad hacking skillz, well… give it time, but let’s just say you should try not forget your bank details again until I’m back in the country.’

 

Then Jane mumbles something unintelligible into her hair, and Darcy pulls away to look at her properly. ‘Hey, what was that?’

 

‘I… I kind of hope it works out between you,’ Jane repeats, as though the words are being dragged from her like blood from a stone. She goes a little pink. ‘You did sound. Um. Really cute together.’

 

Darcy blinks several times. ‘Jane. Did you just… approve of me dating an older man with a dangerous profession? JARVIS, please tell me that you got this on tape.’

‘I’m injured that you even have to ask, Agent Lewis.’

 

‘Oh shut up Darcy.’

***

 

Sam needed a new pair of running shoes, and since Steve wears his out at about five times the speed of a normal person and is thus a veteran shoe shopper, he volunteers to go to the sports store with him. To be honest, he hates the place: the amount of plastic, people and sheer  _ choice  _ makes him feel slightly dizzy. But Sam proposes Starbucks and hotdogs afterwards, and so Steve’s happy to make a day of it.

 

‘So you all ready for the big mission?’ Steve says, when they’re seated on a bench in Central Park. He’s done some quick checks for tails and bugs, but he still sticks to abstract terms.

 

‘As ready as I’ll ever be,’ Sam sighs. ‘Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die.’ They’re not actually leaving for another two days. Steve can appreciate the sentiment, though.

 

‘I hope that this doesn’t turn out to be a wild goose chase,’ Steve puts forward, quietly, after a moment. When Sam turns to look at him, there’s warmth in his eyes, and empathy.

 

‘It won’t be. Don’t worry. What we’re looking for… it’ll be there somewhere.’ Steve nods. He knows what Sam means: it might take a while, might not be easy, but they will find the Winter Soldier. And from there, they can set about finding James Buchanan Barnes.

 

Just then, Steve’s brick-like cell phone rings. He fumbles to the right button - sees Natasha is the caller ID. ‘Hey,’ he greets her, proud to be the first to speak for once, ‘how did the press conference go?’

 

‘Tolerably,’ she says, and Steve realises with a jolt that he can hear her actual voice behind him as well. He turns around to see her coming up the path towards them. ‘Are you all ready for yours?’

 

She’s talking about something that he would much rather forget about for as long as possible: an interview that’s been arranged as something as an afterthought, to address the fact that amongst all the other files leaked - all the matters of national and international security - some people think it logical to focus in on the ones surrounding his own personal life.

 

Turns out that SHIELD were aware that he was ace, and thusly, now the whole world is.

 

So he’s going on some evening news channel to explain himself the night before they leave, and finding it very difficult not to get angry about the whole thing. ‘Why the fuck should it matter to people  _ now  _ of all times which way some random guy swings? Or whether he doesn’t swing at all?’ he’d fumed to Darcy, the evening that the first few big gossip magazines had run with the story. ‘What kind of human being parses through all that data and decides that  _ my personal life  _ is the most interesting thing to focus on?’ 

 

‘Sometimes people like to focus on the manageable revelations before they move onto the fucking terrifying ones,’ Darcy had pointed out, quite reasonably. ‘It’s not exactly a new phenomenon.’

 

‘But what am I supposed to say? I’m here, I’m queer, get over it?’ Steve had given a ragged sigh, running a hand through his hair. ‘And I’m worried about what they’ll ask about you…’

 

‘Natasha’s managed covert ops despite her face being splashed all over the web.’

 

‘She’s been trained from birth by the best espionage agents the world has ever seen.’

 

Darcy looked up from her StarkPad, her expression thoughtful. ‘Fair point. But if I recall, the file didn’t go into much detail about me - just said that you were having relations with another agent, further investigation needed. Thank fuck that SHIELD went to shit before someone could update that article.’

 

Thank fuck indeed. Steve knew they’d had a near miss - as it was, Darcy was just another agent in the droves of newly released material. Her identity wasn’t in the public eye, and she was relatively safe. If she had been… well, he wouldn’t have been able to take her to Europe in good conscience. Until she’d had a full identity makeover, it would have been too risky.

 

‘As regards the interview itself… well. I guess you should just inform them. Tell them about who you are, let them see you’re ok with yourself. If you want to look at the silver lining in all of this, the ace community are probably going to get more good press - hell, press at all - from this than from the last fifty years combined.’

 

Sitting on a park bench, thinking back to that conversation, he smiles a little. ‘Darcy’s been giving me pep talks. I’ll just have to imagine that she’s there yelling prompts from the wings.’

 

‘She coming along with us for the night?’ Sam asks. He’d already volunteered to be part of the studio audience for the interview, a vote of confidence which had made Steve feel more bolstered than any of the celebrity endorsements he’d read in cold print.

 

‘She’ll meet us afterward,’ Steve replies, ‘but for the interview itself, I think she’s gonna be visiting some old friends.’

 

***

 

Darcy comes into the community centre and stares for a moment at the long list of room numbers. ‘Room 109? Room Needle in a fucking Haystack, more like,’ she mutters under her breath. She begins to climb the stairs before she hears a call behind her from the lobby.

 

‘Darcy! That you?’

 

She turns and breaks into a grin as she sees Yamato stroll in out of the cool summer night. ‘Hey dude. You wouldn’t happen to know where this screening thing is going on?’

 

He nods. ‘I helped Lynn set up earlier.’

 

‘Thank fuck, I have no clue where I’m headed.’

 

As they start to wind their way through the corridors of the community centre, Yamato says, ‘I should warn you: this bag contains four tupperware containers full of cake.’

 

Darcy snorts. ‘I should warn you: don’t tell me about it in any more detail or I will rip it from you in the corridor. I’m  _ starving.’  _ She’s been combat drilling all afternoon, and tomorrow they fly for Europe: she has never needed her sugar more. ‘Let me guess, these guys have gone a bit all out tonight?’

 

‘Like normal meetings but more so,’ Yamato confirms.

 

‘Well, it’s nice that somebody is celebrating,’ Darcy sighs, ‘since it feels like freaking world war three is on the verge of beginning most of the time. We never seem to catch a break.’

 

Yamato gives her a searching look, but, typically, he does not pry. Instead, he comes to a halt in front of a pair of varnished wooden doors, bearing a handwritten purple sign:

 

_CAPTAIN AMERICA’S ACE INTERVIEW_

_LIVE SCREENING_

_FRIENDLY CHAT AND DEBATE AFTERWARDS :D_

 

Still, looking at the words, Darcy has a hard time believing it’s true. Steve Rogers, her Steve: sure. But Captain America, the greatest icon of the century, one of  _ them?  _ She still finds it hard to wrap her head around it. 

 

As she enters the room, everybody turns to look at her. These people who she’s been familiar with for months now, who’ve bolstered her, helped her understand more about who she is… well, they’re friends, and Steve’s too. Naturally, when SHIELD’s files were released onto the internet, they had to come clean.

 

The members hadn’t seemed angry; they didn’t even ask too many questions. Darcy supposes that the magnitude of the revelation in the face of a near-apocalypse had been a bit much for most people. When the world has just almost ended, Captain America and his girlfriend being your mates from the ace support group would just feel like the nail in the coffin of weirdness. And in some ways, Darcy had found it easy to share this information with them. They already shared so many of the deepest parts of herself, the parts that she had spent so much time hiding.

 

As she enters the room, Lynn catches sight of her immediately, and leads the mob over to her to wish ‘how are you feeling?’s and ‘good luck’s. Darcy smiles and thanks them all, feeling more bolstered and relaxed already. She heads over to the refreshment table and pours herself a coffee - nowhere near the quality of the Stark Industries brew, but still, it hits the spot - and lets herself be drawn to a seat near the front. NBC is streaming live, and when she looks at her watch, she sees that Steve is due to come on in about ten minutes.

 

Breaking the rule of a lifetime, she googles Steve’s name and taps on a likely-looking Huffington Post article. Scrolling past the article itself, she starts to read the comments. It’s a terrible habit, she knows, but she wants to be forewarned, try and understand how the land lies for her and Steve.

 

‘I dont get it personally. What a waste with his good looks x’

 

‘Captain America gives it his all out there and *hopefully* that should be enough to shut up his critics that seem to believe that he is not entitled to a life outside of the battlefield.’

 

‘Gay or ace or whatever, i don’t know what. He can do what he wants as long as he keeps saving our necks’

 

‘I thought Bucky Barnes was just his best friend?????? Everyone’s gay nowadays :/’

 

‘so is Captain America single or not?’

 

‘He’s doing an interview tonight. Looking forward to learning more about the ins and outs of it then.’…

 

Darcy feels a gentle hand on her wrist, and looks up. It’s Lynn, giving her a gentle smile, though there’s some worry in there, too. Worry for Darcy, but also for herself - what happens tonight will affect them all.

 

‘Perhaps there’s no point in doing that right now,’ she suggests. ‘Afterwards, maybe, to see how it’s gone down, but for now, just try and be in the moment.’

 

Darcy bites her lip. ‘I know. But the moment… You guys… You’re great, but you’re not the big bad world. I want to prepare myself for all the shit we’re gonna have to face out there.’

 

Alex sits down with them, handing Darcy a piece of brownie. She doodles absently on a scrap of napkin, bold black lines forming complex geometrical patterns. ‘But maybe there’s no harm in letting us charge up your batteries before you face the baying crowds. You and Joe - I mean Steve - you deserve the best, and you need to remember that. Anyone who doesn’t snuggle you and ply you with cake isn’t doing their job properly.’

 

Darcy has to laugh at that, if only because it’s truer than they realise. She should be savouring tonight, because tomorrow she’s going to be heading off into uncharted territory, tracking an assassin who’s been lurking in the shadows for decades. Nobody is going to be feeding her cake.

 

As Darcy looks around at the group, she feels a warm rush in her chest for these people who’ve made the time and the effort to carve out an oasis of love, of acceptance, in a world that’s so normally hostile. Nobody here feels threatened or obliged, hurt or afraid. But what they’ve come for isn’t to hide within a bubble, but to have a pitstop, to recharge and then spread that energy to the people that they meet tomorrow and the day after.

 

‘We’re on in two minutes!’ someone techy calls from up the front, and Darcy shakes herself out of the last of her funk, taking a hearty bite of cake and turning to face the screen.

 

‘You’re so right, Alex,’ Darcy says, with her mouth full. ‘They’d better treat him right on this show, or there’ll be hell to pay. Look, how could you refuse a face like that cake and snuggles?’ The interviewer is showing a picture of Steve up on the screen, his mugshot in the SHIELD files, and Darcy’s heart goes out to him, waiting, nervous but determined, ready to do them all proud.

 

Lynn clears her throat, gets to her feet and squeezes Darcy’s shoulder. ‘Maybe you’d like to say a few words to the room?’

 

Darcy swallows, thinks for a moment and nods. She gets to her feet, clears her throat, and the room falls silent around her.

 

‘Thanks to all of you for turning out tonight,’ she says. There’s a hum and a stray ‘you’re welcome!’.

 

‘Now, this is a pretty big thing, as you’re all doubtless aware. Steve’s one of the first superheroes to do a big public interview like this, and I know it means a lot to him - and me, for that matter - that there are people like you who are one hundred percent behind him. So if you could please give yourselves a round of applause…’

 

There’s a laugh and small storm of clapping. Darcy feels warm under the lighting, catches Lynn’s dark eyes and throws her a smile.

 

‘Captain America managed to come out of the iceberg without any trouble.’ She holds their attention in silence for a beat, and then continues: ‘After that, coming out of the fridge will be easy.’

 

The laughter and groans eventually subside. Someone kills the lights. The newsreader rounds up his spiel, and the interviewer begins his. And then.

 

Finally, finally, there he is.

 

On-screen, large as life and jaw just a little bit tenser than it would be if they were cooking breakfast together at her apartment. Looking out at the rest of the world. The voids of his pupils small under the bright lights, swallowed up by cornflower blue.

 

Steve.

 

‘Good luck,’ she mouths at the screen.

 

After this, she’ll meet Steve back at the tower, and they’ll talk everything over. They’ll spent the night there, ready to leave in the morning before first light; a Quintet is already fuelled to take them across the Atlantic. Steve will be nervous, but she’ll calm him down. Sam will greet her warmly, and they’ll sleep easily into their routine of comfortable banter - she’s  _ so  _ glad that he’s gonna be with them on this road trip. Natasha will be cool and efficient; when it comes to it in a crisis, Darcy will always look to her. And maybe it’s presumptuous, but Darcy hopes that she’ll get to see more of what lies beneath Natasha’s immaculate surface. She’s read a lot of the Black Widow’s most classified files, and she knows that this mission will be one where Natasha seeks to discover things about herself as well as Bucky. 

 

She will steel herself to fly into the rain-washed dawn. Steel herself for more combat and heartache and calculated razor-edge risk. But she will also feel a stab of excitement, because this - her mission, her life with Steve, building day by day - it’s more than she ever thought that she would have.

 

And as they walk up the ramp side by side, their hair whipped by the force of the engines, she’ll lean over and tell him, impulsively: ‘I love you,’ simply because she’s not afraid to say it anymore. When he tells her, ‘I love you too,’ delighted and clear-cut and just a little bit astonished it will feel like the most natural thing in the world.

 

In the bright light of morning, they’ll map out their next chapter together.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
